today you looked
across the table at
me. you said, "I
think you were
too scared of me."
but I wasn't scared
not of you
no
no
never I just needed
you so much that
it terrified me.

Poetry hurts.
It hurts to look at, hurts to read, because
it digs into the muscle fiber of your heart and burns its way
marking a fixed tattoo in your bone marrow
tearing through your brain material and ******* you dry.
It requires you to latch into the throttle of the soul and feel the pain
and joy
of everything you experience.
No, there is no escape-
explore your pain, stay there, fully enjoy the beauty and the frightening
love of this terribly glorious world.
Books don't hurt,
they placate. They are the balm on your poetry-burns,
allow you to view your pain objectively, to quietly observe
from a peaceful, magical
faraway land where pain doesn't matter
and that roller coaster is just a funny backdrop instead of
the vehicle in which you fall in love and lose your innocence
in the same run.
Books are the numbing, the morphine
to allow you to fall into an enchanted sleep.

We all need books and poetry at different times- to each his own-
but for my own part,

I prefer poetry.

You tell us that to be too energetic is to be annoying
Or naive
and you get upset there's no positivity around you
and all that's 'okay' is negativity but to be
anything else is to be 'weird'
but where's the sunlight behind the rain?
All the boys are ******* with no personality, but
darling, if you're emotional or have any depth, you're
gay
And guys want a girl who can talk about sports
and won't *****
but those girls are
lesbians
and all anyone wants is to laugh
"Stop laughing, it's aggravating,"
And there's nothing I can do right,
I'll be hated if I do
and ****** if I don't.

Then maybe all this irony is because misery wants company,
And we're so busy making each other miserable
that we've become terribly poor company.

Is this real
or am I deluding myself
calling you 'love' when you feel nothing for me
I can't play with the hand I've been dealt
feeding my ego with faraway fantasies
do you really love me or is this just dreams?
maybe the reason I haven't told you yet is because
as long as I haven't told you, there's a small
fraction of hope, though failure's tall,
when I tell her that everything she does
is magic, then she'll have to make the call
and I'm not ready to hear it- I'm too far
gone with the wind, whispering these
hopeless aspirations to shoot for the stars
and the stars weren't there to begin with.