My life has turned into a series of numbers:
days, dollars, pounds;
like an equation in math class
my life has become too complex
to complete without technological assistance.
Even forming words,
it feels like I’m counting:
letters, syllables, lines,
like maybe if I just keep calculating,
I’ll find the remedy for it all,
find the answer to my heavy head,
because if the answer to the ultimate question
of life, the universe, and everything
is 42
then maybe I can plug it in
behind the “equals” sign
and solve for “x,”
solve for the achey bones and weary eyes,
solve for the rusted parts of our souls,
but I’m tired of trying to find an answer,
because maybe there is no answer,
maybe we’re all just a bunch of monkeys
on a spinning rock,
all of us just trying to survive
before our sun collapses.
And maybe that’s okay.

you are a house
made of flesh and bone.
throw rugs of blonde
on a hard wood floor.
only two windows,
that are usually closed.
your door
never fails to open
when I need it to.
your nerve endings
and veins
are the tangled bedsheets
on the floor
with our clothes.
you are a house,
made of bruises,
and cat scratches,
a house
with a fireplace in your chest,
coaxing people in
when it's cold.
You are a house,
but you are not a home.

I knocked on the door
of the universe. "Am I
real?" No one answered.
I went to the edge
of the world. "Do I exist?"
I got no answer.
I stood on a cloud
and asked the sky, "What is life?"
I received nothing.
I knocked on the ground,
one last try, "Do I matter?"
I'll take that as a "no."
I asked myself, "Is
life worth it?" "Of course," I said.
"Why should it not be?"

I’ve never believed that love is finite.
I’ve always thought that love
is a renewable resource.
Recyclable.
That as long as you are willing
to give out love,
you will receive enough love in return,
to refill yourself with.
But the problem with that was obvious,
some people simply do not give.

So I changed my theory.
Love is infinite.
It grows like trees inside us,
blooms and expands
like every breath is the first.
It plants seeds in our veins
and grow gardens in our chests,
and no matter how many times
that garden is mowed over,
cut down,
ruined,
there will always be one seed.

And it will regrow.

I met a man in the sky last night;
we drank poison in the moonlight.
We walked together, hand in hand,
but he was above; left no prints in the sand.
I met a man in the ocean last night;
he danced on the waves in shadows of light,
delight turned to despair, as the morning came,
I wanted to drown in the waves of shame.
I met a man in the desert last night;
he promised me forever, to never leave my sight.
But the bitter wind had forsaken us,
and he disappeared in a cloud of dust.
I met a man in my dreams last night,
I didn't seen him enter, not by foot or flight.
He told me he was sick, and began to cry,
and in my arms I watched him die

The friction between our eyes
used to be enough to set buildings on fire
but now I'm not even sure
we could light a candle.
You come in so gently,
like a low tide on a Tuesday morning,
but you left like a tsunami,
swelling and breaking,
having no mercy for what you destroyed.
You carried yourself like wind
in July at midnight --
warm and quiet enough
to go unnoticed,
but just enough
that people will notice the changes
when you're gone.
I never got to tell you
how you made me feel so at home,
so comforting, like an endless desert.
But I guess
you've never been so earthly
as you are right now.

The ancient Greeks theorized that as the soul descended from heaven to be born, it gathered elements from the seven visible planets: silver from the moon, mercury from Mercury, copper from Venus, gold from the sun, iron from Mars, tin from Jupiter, and lead from Saturn. These were the components of the soul. After death their souls would return up, dropping off each element at their respective planet, appearing naked before god to be judged.*

If I could rip apart our souls,
what do you think I’d find?
If we are composed of only simplicities,
then I must be copper,
because I’ve always felt the need
to be close to every part of the earth.
Or maybe silver,
since the moon always seemed
more trustworthy to me.
Or maybe because that was Artemis’ color,
and I always longed to be pure.
It was an alchemist’s noble metal,
strong yet malleable,
able to be hammered
or pressed
permanently out of shape.
you seem to have spent far too long
on Mercury, learning from the god himself.
Filling yourself with liquid poison,
learning to dissolve precious metals.
The Roman god Mercury,
often helped guide lost souls to the underworld,
so maybe that’s why
the longer we lasted,
the more it felt like hell.
You always were toxic to me.
The ancients used lead for everything,
they lined their bathtubs and pipes,
and was considered the best ingredient
in fine wine.
They bathed and drank and drank and drank
until they couldn’t tell the difference
between the two,
washing their sins
whether from skin or from soul,
they were dying just the same.
I guess some things never change.
Tin is still a simple,
under-appreciated metal,
used for simple, unappreciated objects,
but if we are all only elements,
you are a tin man.
The finest element has always been gold,
believed to be of the sun.
People loved it because it seemed
to ooze warmth.
Most religions worshipped the sun,
even though it could **** them
before they had a chance.
The sun,
though warm and life-giving,
has too much power,
and you always did, too.

the closest i've ever gotten to home
are the nights i stay up too late
trying to hack into the twilight zone
but only end up ******* fate
and maybe i play too much with death
but it's been three days since i last slept
and it seems like blowing my brains out is the only way i'll get any rest
because nights like these the rooms stare moving
and i swear to god the walls are talking to me
and they're screaming back everything i've ever told them
and spewing out the memories they hold
but what the ****, i trusted them so much, you know?
and this is what i get?
and oh my god the ceiling's bleeding
my hands are bleeding
there's blood everywhere
and i can't remember whose it is

Darling,
do you think 200 years from now
archaeologists will care about us?
Not humanity as a whole,
just us.
Do you think scientists will discuss
the way your skin reflects moonlight?
Do you think historians will teach
of the way you thought I didn't know
you only tickled me so I would hold your hand?
And darling,
do you think the moon,
or the sky,
or the universe,
feels any sort of obligation
to accept our existence?
Because I don't.

I can write you into poetry,
breathe your name in my sleep.
But my words are hollow,
and my eyelids are so heavy.
See,
I didn't want to write another poem
about you
or love at all,
for that matter.
But its so hard
to not feel like
a character in a *******
John Green novel
when you talk about her
And I can't help thinking
I can love you so much better.
I don't think she notices
your eyes when you laugh,
or your one crooked tooth,
or that that's not even your natural hair color,
and I don't think she notices
when you're upset
or if she does
she doesn't care
And it pains me to think that
you love so fully
and completely,
like Pudge,
but I am not your Alaska.
And I can't help thinking
you deserve someone
who will love you like Hazel Grace,
who will see constellations in your face
and won't laugh when you cry.
But now matter how many cliches
I write down
or if I'm sleeping beauty,
I can't help feeling
that somewhere along the line
I got stage fright and couldn't play
Augustus right,
like I'm the only character
who forgot the words,
and that's stupid because
I'm supposed to be a main character,
but somehow I got mixed up
with the background.
So I don't know if this is my fault
for mistaking myself
for someone more important,
or if I'd even make a difference
if I was

We were lovers once,
when I was much younger and you only a bit.
You cradled me like a mother,
and made me laugh like a father,
and more than once you rocked me to sleep.
But then came a time where I started to distrust you,
didn’t want to be part of your life for fear of what others would say.
I kept my distance,
no matter how hard you tried to convince me to return.
I’m sorry I let my self hate wedge itself between our bond.
I’m sorry I was ashamed of the way you made me feel,
when all you did was give me love.
I’m sorry I’ve been away so long,
I’ve been trying to repair the injuries more complex entities have caused me,
but I’m ready to come home now.

you are inches
i measure in miles
and i keep pretending
you're giving years
but its only days
and i keep taking hours
when you give me seconds
because i want a lifetime
while you want one night

you are an artist
the way you break
and reassemble me
so many times
until i begin to disintegrate
in your hands
and sometimes i swear
i feel every minuscule cell
slip through your fingers
and you don't even feel it
because you are too distracted
with the bending of my bones
to care about the loss
of a few teeth
or fingernails
in the process

There is a constant glowing
in the back of my brain.
Optimists will say it's a light
at the end of the tunnel.
Pessimists will say its a train.
But I think I kn ow myself well enough
to know that it's probably
an exit sign

nobody likes pretty anymore,
they want the dirt and the grime,
they don’t want anything to rhyme,
they want bodies washed up on the shore.
all they ever want to see are bruises,
people put to death with stones,
cars running over orange highway cones,
the sadness of the long lost muses.
they want blood and gore and death,
they want crosses and flowers beside the road,
if you gave them pretty they’d implode,
because they exhale beauty with every breath.
that’s probably why they like me so much,
because I wear dead things as a cloak,
but it’s faux fur and it’s making me choke,
making my skin burn with every touch.
but they love that ****, they eat it for breakfast,
they use my battle wounds to decorate,
all they seem to do is hate,
my dying body is their aesthetic.
they’re the opposite of a welcoming committee,
they only want you if you’re broken,
they use you as “my friend is depressed!” token,
but all you wanted was to feel pretty

Sometimes I like to just lay down and listen to myself breathe.
I like to feel my pulse,
to remind myself, that yes,
there is still a heart in there.
Somewhere.
Somewhere, buried beneath all the empty pill bottles
and ****** knuckles,
there is still a human being,
fighting, pushing, beating
its way to the surface.
And I know that,
eventually,
it will come crawling out of my mouth,
and into someone else's.
It will leave me gasping,
begging,
and afraid,
and I'll never be ready,
but it will feel so, so good.
And I cannot wait
for its escape.

I've spent the last four years of my life sleeping on top of the letters between us both,
and I don't know what that says about me,
but today I passed a broken down church the windows boarded up,
but you could still hear the music pouring out.
It made me think of you because you were always such a fixer-upper
but still carried beauty.
And maybe we've both been hiding from the truth,
and painting the rusted chains around gold.
You never keep a calendar because you hate counting days,
so you put up pictures of me instead,
and I don't know what that says about you
but yesterday I passed a homeless man
picking bits and pieces out of a garbage can
and it made me think that I really need to throw out those letters.

Brace for impact;
I feel you enter my bones
like a tidal wave
and I collapse under the pressure.
I feel you seeping through
the cracks of fragile minerals and tissues
and into my veins,
pumping through my body
like adrenaline.
And I can hear you,
pounding between my ears
like hands on a clock.
All you ever wanted
was a monument,
a skyscraper in your name,
something to be remembered by
once we both grow old and disappear.
I had anticipated
being many things to you,
but not once did I expect
to be your gravestone.
And it's been years
and everyone says you're gone,
but sometimes I can still hear you,
in the silence between each heartbeat,
"I'm alive."

My garden is dying.
My flowers are wilting,
weeds are growing out of control.
There’s a few,
that are still holding on,
but they’ll probably be gone soon, too
because I keep watering the same flowers
that are already dead

I swear humans are sponges
we're so fragile
and dry up so quickly
and I swear
we have enough holes in our souls
to plant flowers
But no matter how much we think we fill them
there's always one small hole
empty

and then we dry up

Planted during a rainless spring,
we tried so hard to grow;
the soil was so rough,
and we couldn't take root.
The summer storms were ******* us,
but we held our ground,
shaking in shallow earth.
And when fall came,
you turned a different color than me,
but we lost our leaves just the same.
Winter came far too soon,
freezing us in place.
Our branches barely touching,
we knew we wouldn’t make it.
And when spring came again,
we woke up with deadened twigs,
and I was half uprooted,
but oh god, how I tried,
I tried to grow with you, I swear,
and I begged you to help me grow, too,
but you were too close to the sky
to even hear me

most days my ribs
feel more like prison bars
than support structures
barricading my heart
from blooming

Starting poems is hard.
Starting anything is hard, really.
I wish starting things
were as easy as nature makes it seem.
I wish it was a as easy
as the sun makes it seem
in the morning.
Also like the sun,
I wish I was the one
who gets to kiss your skin
and keep you warm.
I wish I was the bottle
that touched your lips
way too early.
I would have tasted better.
And I wish I was the gun,
and when you pulled the trigger,
I would have kissed your temple.
Ending poems is hard, too.

The words pump out faster than the blood in your cheeks,
sentences imprint themselves on your body like scars.
You're the murderer and the victim,
the gun and the exit wound,
you did this to yourself.

A towering sky line miles away,
the silhouette of a broken promise.
Buildings stare you down,
streetlights lift you up.
The city of insomnia and dreams,
you will always return to

You are the black eye
I got in a fight when I was younger,
the empty space of a recently pulled tooth.
You are the almost empty soap bottle,
an itch I can’t quite reach.
You are the sound of church bells
on Sunday morning and the smell
of burnt bacon
after the cook got distracted.
You are the cliche of a poem,
the line people talk about.
You are the hum of a steady drumbeat
in the background of song.
You are broken,
and in pieces,
nearly a mosaic,
and you are everything an artist needs
to paint a masterpiece.

A couple sitting on the stones on the edge of the ocean,
and I walking a dock,
(their silhouettes barely visible against an early morning)
I could tell they weren't talking,
just sitting there,
listening to the waves hit the rocks
that existed centuries
before any creature was around to hear it.
And watching them I wonder
if the water
made them fall in love
like it did to so many things before them.
I wonder if they think they're alone
(Are we ever?)
He stands,
she stands,
(I wonder if they see me too)
I wonder if he loves her,
if she loves him.
(They grab hands)
I wonder if he reads her eyes
like she reads his body
(They walk to the edge)
I wonder if he tells her
she's beautiful
(They jump)
And I wonder if it's possible to write
a poem without a sad ending

When a car slows down behind me
and in the 5 seconds between
the car slowing to a crawl
and the window rolling down
I've had 27 panic attacks
and fully convinced myself
this is how I die:
murdered by a man
twice my size
But when the window rolls down
I see not a body building male
but a woman roughly the age of my mother
and she asks if I'm okay,
and do I need a ride

Depression is like wearing a fur coat
in the middle of summer,
with nothing underneath.
It is heavy, and *****,
and probably smells bad,
and you are sweating under its weight,
but you can’t take it off
because you don’t want
people to see you naked.
And they always ask,
“Why don’t you just take it off?”
And they don’t understand that you are too bare,
too raw,
to go outside without it;
that underneath the pelts
of dead things on your back,
you are frail,
and they would ravage you without it.
And you want nothing more
than to take it off,
throw it out,
but it’s scary
to let the world see you
without its coverage.

She’s got a heart of gold behind rotted lungs;
she has brass teeth and a silver plated tongue.
She’s the darkness before the sunrise that you always stay up to greet;
she’s the ****** nose you get when you trip over your feet.
She’s a fire-breathing dragon with a hoard of broken hearts,
and if you lined them up by time, her’s would be at the start.
She’s not afraid of anything, at least that’s what she says,
but her hand can’t help but shake when she puts it into his.
She’s a lion when she’s angry, a mourning dove when she’s sad,
she may drive you crazy, but she’s the best you've ever had.
She’s both the damsel and the knight, the beast and the slayer,
just when you think you've seen it all, you find another layer.
An Empress in her own right, you’ll think she’s got it made,
but she’d have lit herself on fire if it would've made him stay.
She’ll tell her she’s crazy during your first official fight,
you’ll immediately regret it when she won’t let you stay the night.
She’ll nurse you when you’re sick and kick you when you’re down,
but you’d break open your own rib-cage just to fashion her a crown.
She’s your worst nightmare and still your best recurring dream,
her gentle touch will make anything better than it seems.
When you lose her it feels like you've lost a war,
you’d give anything just to dance with her like before.
It’ll feel like you've lost your other half,
which you very well just could have.

Press Play
The world is spinning and if I didn't know any better I’d swear it was ending
Sometimes I still feel like it is
Pause
and the sickness is still there,
throbbing behind my eyelids like waves hitting rocks
time is frozen and I’m forced to feel everything
Play
The world is spinning again but this time in slow motion and I can see every image that ever hurt pass by me,
can feel them being burned into my brain
Rewind
to when it was easier and a couple holding hands or kissing didn't send me into a spiraling vortex of crippling sadness
Fast Forward
to two days from now and it will still hurt but not nearly as much because I’ll probably be high and kissing someone else wishing it was you
Play
but right now I still feel like I’m dying because she’s wrapped around your waist and you around her finger while I’m on the floor in the bathroom dry heaving until I ***** empty pill bottles and my insides rip through my old scars and look me in the eye and spit the truth and I’m screaming louder than I can hear trying to block it out because I can’t imagine a life where I am not her and the room is spinning spinning spinning and the walls are bending like an old bridge in a storm and the floor is caving in and
Stop

Please remember,
that you are made
from the same thing
stars are made of.
And please remember,
that you are strong enough
to wipe out entire cities
of creatures smaller than yourself,
but that you are kind enough
not to.
Please remember to forgive yourself.
Remember your grandmother,
and how she believed in you,
much more than any boy ever did.
Remember picking dandelions
when you were little,
because you thought they were the prettiest flower,
even after your mother told you they were weeds,
but you kept picking them anyway.
Remember this moment,
right now, wherever you are,
and remember to treat people
like dandelions.

There is a kingdom,
out past the conscious bounds,
where the wild ones live.
Those who are more free
than our own bodies
would ever let us be.
But if one’s soul
is in touch enough
with the truth
of the universe,
they will be welcome.