You're like a book I never want to put down,
where every page I turn pulls me deep into a place
where I realize that turning back for air
would be an impossible journey to make.
So I've accepted this as my fate.
There is no plan B, in fact there isn't even a plan A.
I've exhausted all those options.
I'm to the point where the only letter
I care about making plans for is U.
If you took just a glace at my latest chapter,
you'd see every letter, word, and sentence is this.
People are getting tired of hearing it but
I am far from tired of letting people know that
I am done with dreaming only in my sleep.
I must become the dream
where you draw the inspiration from
that keeps your quill in motion.
I want to live in your story
like every day was never-ending.
Just please don't ask me to be your knight in shining armor
because I don't care how shiny it is,
I'm never going to wear it when I have you in my arms.
And I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't completely scared of that idea,
but a long time ago I made a vow to scare myself at least once day.
And I'm not saying that you're simply just a means to an end,
I'm trying to say that you are the end and
I feel bad for whatever means to get in my way to reaching you.
Scared? You bet your *** I am.
But I think that's just the universe's way of breathing life back into me.
So let me fall deeper into your pages
till I am left without any air in my lungs
and I begin to see stars,
because your universe now
is the only place I care to draw breath from.

I can't look at other girls without seeing your face
and the space it fills up while spilling the waste
of a bad days taste left stale on my tongue
while you clean it with yours, cupid's arrow is plunged
inside of my heart as it's strung onto yours,
a zipline to glide on and slide in your core.
I look to my compass, your smile is north,
when the sun goes down, it shines even more.
And scorn from jealousy the sun may just mourn,
but returning to you from the darkest of storms.
So if ever I get lost in this great big world,
my home I will find from your lips when they curl.

You loathe your last name like a throat full of pain.
When I speak out the letters, a cringe you constrain,
And tighten the wrinkles on top of your brain,
But apologizes naught, from my throat they will stay.
The beauty you hold and forever remain,
Is given back ten-fold and never contained.
The sound of your brand you needn't abstain.
It does not define you, your beauty remains.
Like Helen of Troy or Aphrodite aflame,
Off the tip of my tongue you are one and the same.
Have faith in my soul and the words I proclaim,
Your name on my heart is forever engraved.

It's not that easy giving you sweet compliments
When sweetness always seems to drip right off of you.
I would much rather use my lips to savor your flavor
Without saving a single drop from falling.
If you want me to be honest,
I spent my morning stalling inside of my dreams
Where I saw you and things that are make believe,
Yet made me believe that anything was possible.
Your heartbeat audible as it’s caught in my crown.
You asked for my favorite song
Well you’re singing it right now.
And somehow, someway, or some other day,
I’ll taste all the corners of your sweet Milky Way.

Honestly I’m too caught up in you to even function sometimes.
People ask me if I’m okay because I have tunnel vision confined
To a place where I never look back and never resign.
But I can barely make out their words
When your song keeps singing in my head,
And stringing the thread of your heart to mine.
As it pulls without tearing enough to flatline,
While taking you in
To a “Once upon a time” world beneath my skin.
Where the sun kisses you every chance you look away,
And the moon cradles you as if someday you’ll never get older.
Because with you, time never wants to move but carry
Your everlasting stokes of color made from sweet berries.
On a canvas that’s trying really hard to sit still when you’re fatal lips ****
Whatever seems to be holding me down.
A piece that compounds beauty on top of brilliance.
Discovering yourself and the meaning of existence.
Like two flames holding hands, never to strand
From the light, they expand to burn down the doors
That others have shut with all their might.
Chasing the tails of fairies to horizonless twilight.
Searching for no end but the means of foresight undressed
When looking ahead I see wings spread from behind your chest
And pull me pressed to the taste of heaven
When I'm close enough touch your breath.
So don’t stop breathing and never stop believing in our laughter
Because every breath we ever share becomes happily ever after.

I want to say yes but I’m hung up on the no’s.
Open chest, I digest, then digress to find a home.
No black and white choices like a checkmate toe-to-toe.
Broken glass inside the ring, the reflection of my own.
I wonder if its tears or I wonder if it’s sweat,
Only thing remaining clear are the clouds inside my head.
Like a brainy haze it’s rainy days everywhere I stay,
So if I ever land from high its guaranteed delays.
And I pay, and I pay till the flesh from heart decays.
Blood that turns to water never grows a rose bouquet.
It’s not okay because the roses, she always loved the most,
My hands open up where thorns and pedals juxtapose.
Mother Nature has opposed, and goes to numb my tipping toes,
As I fall into a hole and fold myself to fit the mold.
Getting old from selling souls to people like it was my own,
Behold this heart I newly stole, its beating I postponed.
And proposed she may just never know, I’m destined all alone.
No turning houses into homes, its more like catacombs.
As I roam through the cemetery tripped on sticks and stones,
Falling chest first onto a pile made of bones.
****** stick into my skin as I’m threaded by the thorns,
Of wilted roses stemming from the past I never mourned.
Nevermore to see the light of love while buried from the floor,
On this battlefield of sin within a prisoner of war.

Treading on new ground, tumbledown I fear the worst
With hands clenching tightly like the backdoor of a hearse
And what’s worse becomes the knot from which my stomach will not drop
As it is tied too tightly to a being near forgot
The choices that I’ve made become the ones that never stop
Moving in reverse my curse, ahead of me is blocked
By a body absent pulse where the soul has left its host
Haunted by the light then disappearing like a ghost
And like most I’m left idle gears changing, carriage coasts
To a path in lieu of solitude, the path I never chose
Dousing sparks now depart, ignition gone as pistons slow
Shifting stars becoming clouds, heaven high no longer glows
Wheels stop, crippled clock, as both headlights now explode
Swinging door, stitches torn, walk the path away from home
Shield stripped, one way trip to a throne that’s made of bones
Body pale, life derailed, the only life I’ve ever known
Cold water cuts the sky, broken tears of angels cry
Now carving out my flesh, pooling blood till vessels dry
With the body at my feet, the body’s heart would not comply
Oh that body at my feet, oh that body it was mine.

Today I went out in the world and I was alone
But you were in my mind as etched onto stone
And it felt like a home you were holding my hand
As we saw so many places as dreams that expand
On the stroll we saw hills rolling lush with green emeralds
And white fabled stallions wild out of their stables
You looked into my eyes and saw something that was fatal
But not in a bad way, just beautifully disabled
Vulnerability like a newborn that’s safe in my cradle
Like resurrection, a prophecy, your head held a halo
So I held you ever closely as the sun began set
We were sitting on a bench and no words needed said
As reflexes dawned onto you I was drawn
Two heart beats in sync, two lips formed a bond
And when we opened our eyes we tickled clouds in the sky
Freefalling through space, laws of physics defied
I reached into your chest and pulled both of us inside
And bound as we found a cocoon to reside
No death do we part if our life be denied
So when we break free to the heavens we will fly

I’m spending too much time on the phone
Thinking about what not to say
Rather than just saying that
I think there’s not enough time in the day
To tell you what you mean to me
So my plan is to turn this day into a life
Worth living a thousand times over
And under, in front, and behind,
360 degrees of you on my mind
I mean 160 characters is hardly enough
To describe your character and
The only emoji worth sending you
Cannot be found on a backlit screen
Or on an x-ray for that matter
It’s found in the palm of my hand
When it’s wrapped in yours
Or on the tip of my tongue
Dancing on your shore
And sure I don’t mind texting you constantly
But I’m more of a primal lover
I need to give you my entire soul
Not just a piece
While returning the peace you leave in me
So don’t worry about reception because
If you think hard enough about me
That just means I’m thinking just as hard about you
And you feel it too
So if this call ever drops
And you haven't had enough
You’ll always know how to find me

Tracing the tattoos on your arm with the pupils of my eyes
Should I touch
The night is getting older
The mistakes I haven’t made yet are making me anxious
The conversation I’m hiding from you is beginning to make my lips turn blue
But you have become exceedingly good at turning them purple
Merging my misery with your happiness
Finding the average in a not-so-average pair
Remaining too close for comfort
While comfortably numb to both yesterday and tomorrow’s heart ache
I’m scared because you make me feel
You make me think
You make me someone other than the man I used to be
And I’m having trouble deciding if that’s a good or bad thing right now
The good news today is that I always see you in my dreams
The bad news tomorrow is that I may forever see you in my nightmares

You have a smile that turned a cloudy night
into a perfect sunset hugging the horizon.
And your eyes they whisper lullabies
to the tempo of my heart beating, throbbing,
keeping me warm when the world resides.
A slumber of the sweetest kind
on messy sheets in the heart of night.
With hands like pillows forever fluffed,
when dreaming of you I can’t wake up.
For dreams of night to dreams of wake,
I pray for you my soul to take.
And rest my life I dare not shake
the view of roses that never flake.
Too good to be true, too good that it's you.
A black and white life now springing with hues.
So no need for a picture, or a thousand words
as you melt the freeze frame with every twirl,
every step, all my walks of life reset.
I found you when the pale night crept
with stars as specks behind you wept.
And nervous I kept you wouldn't expect
But my feet were shaking off the floor you swept.
And if the days beyond us disconnect,
your sunset smile I won't forget.

The chances of winning the lottery is about 292 million to one
Subsequently the probability of exhausting your fortune
Back down to being broke is 70%
The odds of you becoming more broken than when you started thereafter is 100%
Getting something for nothing conflicts with the 1st Law of Thermodynamics
The problem herein is mindset
The brain is not ready to handle what it has not be trained to grasp
What you do not grasp you will lose
Every last bit
I know this
I have always flexed the left side of my brain far more than its counterpart
The world just makes more sense that way
In fact the world used to make a lot more sense until the day I met her
The brain she had drew strength from the right side
Creating the perfect yin to my yang
Her first name was an unbalanced equation
That my last name would be the answer to
How opposites attract is a study that used to fascinate me
But the laws of attraction will only work for so long
Until one body is acted upon by an unbalanced force
Trying to solve the riddle- I mean equation
That began at her lips left me crunching numbers
With my teeth on the back of her neck
The chances of me finding her were 292 million to one
I spent day after day after day joining my fingers-I mean digits, with hers
Crisscrossing two destinies- I’m sorry, years, into one lifetime
With the promise of forever, or infinity, on her tongue
Love- I mean dopamine, no!
I mean happiness, I mean the very cradle of divinity, no!
I mean biochemical *******, intersubjectivity, romantic singularity-

******* IT!

What I’m trying to say that is she took my tongue and taught it a new language
She showed me the irrelevancy of numbers and logistics
And replaced them with a black hat
She reached into and pulled the impossible out of  
In time, she would ask me to stick my hands in and see what I could find
But instead, I was pulled into a black hole sitting at the very bottom of it
Stretching the fabric of my neurons
Ripping my mind in half, the left side of me left forever
Leaving me with only the right, which is wrong
I have become something I do not know how to be
Feeling hot while cold, full while emptied, arrested while freed all at once
The unfamiliar became my everyday
The brain waves of love and insanity identical
Where hours melted to minutes
Until I was pulled out of that place by an by unknown hand
To meet an unfamiliar face, in a very strange world
I could see it in her eyes, reflecting mine back to me
That the world as I knew it no longer existed
The black and white of a once perfect ying and yang
Bleed fully onto each other to create a complete grayness
I took my chances, ignored the facts, swallowed by the impossible
Left broken on the other side of an equation that I was never ready to solve
Because I never realized that love and sadness could exist in the same space
How some days I can’t tell one feeling from the other
How some days I consider these feelings once came from nothing
How some days I wonder if I’ll ever make it back to who I was
And maybe, just maybe, I will find those broken pieces in the palm of her hand
So most days my eyes are shut tight
Still wishing for her hands to create a miracle and pull me out of this place
But would she even recognize me now?
Or will I only ever be a soft memory of the broken promise of forever?

forever; anti-never
and I sever hearts that measure
not so clever, my hands tether
butterfly flutter, changing weather
birds of feather, my endeavor
open kevlar when I met her
cupid's quiver, better get her
stupid picture, wet in gutter
letter lover, better ever
let her, love her, now or never
red her lips, that make me stutter
yet her kisses, soft as butter
hands together, soul that suffers
empty vessel, no more clutter
enter bodies into blender
piece by pieces all dismembered
open heart you let her render
cut her heart, and made her tremble
nothing left, feeling better
nothing left, I can't remember
dreader, just another pleasure
deader, just like sunken treasure.

Have you ever said "Hi" to the sunset
and have him say "Hi" back?
As to unpack his rays,  
he decides to stay with you
and glaze his hues
across fluffy warms clouds
and a sky once blue.
Like he's happy to see you too.
And to send a message to the moon
to "Stop running away!
'Cause no matter where you go
in this Milky Way,  
I will always melt your gloom.
You know I'm not very good with goodbyes,
so let's just say I'll see you soon."

What doesn’t come out of your mouth,
Will come out of your ***.
So make sure that what you say counts,
And everything you don’t will pass.

some things go without being said
and some things leave in the same manner . . .  
the door is still opened
i kicked it off of its hinges
what’s the point of having a door
if you keep it closed all the time
right . . ?
and what’s the point of having kevlar
if you’re too lazy to attach the straps
right . . ?
i have more attachment issues than hair on my head
because life has always left me cliffhanging off the ends of ellipses' . . .
i can’t be around people for extended periods
probably because they breath too much
and i would much rather be alone underwater
or at least deep enough to where light becomes afraid of dark
even though light never gave him a chance . . .

Misery is a tragic novel that proves challenging to put down,
Largely in the absence of light, once the Sun has made its rounds.
It’s like a book you would rather read in the dusk, in the rain,
Between gray clouds who rumble nothing else but pain.
If you try your eyes in the dark eventually you shall, without strain,
Find from the shadows clouded gems and course-less veins.

How cowering minutes turn to hours of riddance.
The hands of time stiff as they stab, splits at it scabs,
But you are the one carving fragments from flesh
Public you display for others impressed, only to digress.
Eventually you will use every last inch of yourself,
Until nothing will be left.

What people forget to mention about depression
Is that it has nothing to do with being sad.
It’s the half-numb sound that raindrops hold
Falling down a void that once was whole.
Speaking not a sound, streaming past the soul.
Because they too cannot find solid ground,
or any place called home.  

They come from your book, to which you are the script
The pages too wet, for any new ink to stick
You are left hanging on a page that is no longer crisp
Turn to new leaves, don’t leave your story in amiss.

And for now, put the book down,
Wait for the pages to dry flat
While the next time the Sun makes its rounds.
Just make sure you say, "Hi" back.

Today was the first time we ever met.
You were smiling.
To think that any other day there could have been a frown on your face.
But today, today you were smiling.

My tongue misses the dance with yours
Like thirsty sand on a draughtful shore
Not doubtful, I’m sure you will quench me again
Like it lost from beginning, till what lies on end

My bed has been sinking to only one side
Some eyelids fall sneaking atop these eyes
Wafting the moon with me while the sun starts to hide

Under the foot of my bed
I see you tonight only in my head

Only in my head

I am stilled scared that I am capable of losing the heat around my heart.

But when I reached for the sun,



I forgot how far away it was from Earth.





I forgot how the more I flew to it,








The colder I got.

I'm balancing the seesaw rhythm of the sun against the moon
Swooning in circles- my vice to your versa
Dropping the dice
Hoping these verses are keeping you warm when my hands cannot
Knotting underwater thirst taking aim at a sea salt sprinkled sky
Kaleidoscopes revolving in my eyes
Complimenting stars who have never blushed so bright

I’m sorry
It’s been a long time since I’ve been down this road
I’m looking for the letter that comes after ‘T’
I remember finding her
Where it rained rose petals
Rose pedals, from sunrise till sunsleep
Where every morning began like taking my first breath of real air
Like an overload of senses
Ego waiving defenses
So dizzy till your dancing

There are places where romance is like science and religion combined
How serotonin can spill from your mouth and into mine
And returning the favor gets wrapped in your thighs tied tightly
Where an epoch of yin meets an eternity of yang
Where the seesaw pivot meets rose petal rain

I don’t remember ever seeing so much rain in California.
The great city of Los Angeles translates to the city of angels.
You can count the number of rainy days a year on two hands so
when I see so much water cut through the clouds
I can’t help but feel the tears of angels falling on my skin.


Recently my brain has been spinning in circles.
A needle scratching the surface to the melody of someone else’s face.
A phonograph that hasn’t turned on since the hopeless drunken nights
of butterflies trying to flutter through waterfalls.


Since then my heart has been handy
with the backs of a No. 2 pencils. Erasing the memory
of where this player’s off switch went.
I’m left with a familiar loop that feels like fine fleece cue tips
warming the inside of my ears,
wiping the very dust off my soul.


I'm taking the wheel of a mind and driving my madness to rainclouds.
Raindrops of today
filling the warm puddles of nostalgia for me to splash in once again.  
So don’t ask me how old I am today
since my stomach is tied in boy scouts knots
as I think of the cocoa-colored eyes of my boy scout’s crush.


Dancing under the tears of angels with butterflies dancing back.
Being smart is a skill I’m good at,
but being foolish is a faculty I’ve mastered.
So I dance one step forward and two step back, laughing
while slipping off the nostalgia.
Falling down on butterflies that have grown strong enough to pick me back up.


You can call me crazy,
but the rainclouds above me never seem to last.

You’ve been running underneath the stitches of my baseball caps,
resting in the pockets of my t-shirts, and
etched into the glass of my contacts
where the sun sometimes glares and makes me dizzy.
You left your aroma on my pillows,
scratch streaks on my back,
and chocolate covered bruises on my neck
that make my mouth water every time I look at them.

And out of your mouth
fell raindrops from the storm inside your chest.
Touching my lips
I woke from the dreams of night to the dreams of day,
discovering the softest of gold upon my own.
Smelting fortunes of two destines hot to the touch
as dropping the ball like Auld Lang Syne
but there’s never enough time,
never enough time
looking forward or back
universe stops in its tracks as I look into your eyes.

Sometimes you’re telling me a story
and all I can hear are X’s and O’s.
No pencil or paper but tic-tac-toes tickling mine,
sending shooting stars up my spine.
These crooked feet started from point A and
I’m trying to make it all the way to U.
But if this alphabet becomes too bothersome
then let’s make a language of our own.

Believe me the rest will follow
like we have Chinese finger traps bridging our hands,
when pulling away reminds us how we're a lot like rubber bands.
Piggy-backing through the wild with cat-like vision and dog-like devotion
we’ll learn to speak to our inner animals because
humanity has become a little overrated these days.
So when I find your beast under the sheets
I will pull off its leash with my bear teeth.
Excuse my scrambled tongue for
filterless words can fall off my lips like butter on warm cinnamon toast,
I've never remembered being so hungry for something.

My mouth is beginning to sweat and
you’re mouth held raindrops when we met.
So when your tongue touched mine it sparked the perfect storm.
A hurricane drowning out the past
leaving a life boat for two. Four hands
building a mast, searching for land, gripping the forecast.
Sailing on top of natural disasters,
to find a world better than the one left underneath us.

Treading eyes
Afloat from a pool of liquor
As the liver overloads.
A hand
Around a red cusp traces mine,
Clocking hearts in for overtime.
The burning of a
Gaze overtaking
The cherry suns,
Warming inhibition.
So on occasions rare
It only takes two eyes to see what thirty cannot.
Eyes locking lashes
Lassoing souls together.
Two bodies bow tied to one.
Stitching fingers to perfection
With hands
Creating a cocoon around her chest.
Waiting for her wings to grow.

I used to know every soft crack in her hand
and how I loved coating each one
with the skin from mine.
I would rest on her warmth
and think about how I never wanted to leave that vacation.

As the suns turned to moons, summer turned to winter
and winter couldn’t look back.

It dried her skin and calloused mine.
I would reach for her hand but
it gripped like a stranger with a hidden agenda.

Winter eventually turned back to summer but
summer was someone else.

I’m with a new hand now
who’s soft cracks attempt to fill my gaps. But
instead of giving her my skin,
I leave sand in between us
from last year’s vacation I never wanted to leave.

There is something about the voices in the wind, no?
How they can whisper sweet nothings through comb tooth cracks.
When you reach one hand to the future
and one hand to the past
you forget about present flight.
Featherless birds with eye lids shut,
can you hear the secrets
as they slink inside your ears
and slide behind your eyes returning the sparkle once lost?
Do you see it now?
If you dream of freefalling you will always wake up flying.
Trust the winds
because landing is the tricky part.

I lost myself once upon a time
in a place that was only whispered to me in dreams.
Where the fog is thick and threads through the seams
of street lights and street cars with *** fights and brillo bars.  
I tell you I lost myself on the tongue of insanity
who swallowed my soul to feed its humanity.
I lost myself
in a city that found me;

San Francisco, 2013

Let me extend two points like two bridges
that begin in separate places but lead to the same thing.
I’m talking the people in both hands with countless art in between.

The people, the people, the people.
What can’t be said about the near million faces
sleeping on warm pillows or cold stones,
wearing top hats or traffic cones
because not every night are people thriving.
But they’re still surviving, getting busy living or getting busy dying.
In their eyes are stories being told
once you wipe those windows into their souls, deep.
You see it all,
Just like every star in the fall when the sun goes to sleep.
I gave a homeless man a dollar who gave it to another homeless man who then gave it back to me
Like we were passing a love note that said, “You need this more than me.”
So which of us was the one without the home?

Home I soon found in the art of every step taken,
one foot in front of the next.
I can’t walk through that city discounting the side effects.
I was drunk,
but not from bottles or cans
I was drunk from the hands
that told tales with graffiti art to camera pans.
and countless other melodies
massaging bricks into the landmarks that spanned.
Culture sprinkling up and down the hills and between the cracks
Painting colors in the sky as the rainbows stacked,
Finding pots of gold by merely lifting my eye lids back.

There is so much to say about this city in the bay,
that is held in place by the people of race
and the vessels of art that encompass in its space
like stories and attitude,
survival and gratitude,
muse and expression
in delight or depression.

I tell you I lost myself in that city.
But I know now that being lost is sometimes the only way to be truly found.

I wish I had the courage to talk to pretty girls.
It’s not them; it’s their cold beauty that makes
my fingers shiver, and rejection that makes me
feel like I’m a white lighter that strikes out
nothing more than sparks.

I wish I had the courage to not take **** from
my superiors and remind them that when you
beat the life out of a man, you had better cut a deal
with Death if you plan to let him stand back up.

I wish I had the courage to rise above peer
pressure and see that a bulletproof vest isn’t so
dumb when you realize that the person you take
a bullet, for was actually the one who loaded the gun.  

I wish I had the courage to tell you that your ****
looked HUGE in those jeans,
and I wanted to burn every other pair you owned.

I wish I had the courage to get out of bed every
morning, because sometimes I forget that I’m
actually still alive, and my blinds keep hiding the
fact that this world is made of sugar.

I wish I had the courage to be vulnerable again
but trust is a treasure someone stole from my heart,
left a bag of sand in its place, and took off running.

I wish I had the courage to ask for help because I’m
not the sharpest cheddar in the fridge and I was born
with a head that could break down brick walls.

I wish I had the courage to own a snake but I was
brought up Catholic so I am conditioned to fearing
both the Devil and God.

I wish I had the courage to keep my commitments
so when the people I love open my promise box,
they actually find something inside.

I wish I had the courage to let go of the past
and get past the point of letting go.

I wish I had to courage to speak at your funeral . . .
but I’ve never been the fastest to pick up the pieces, and even when I do I always put them in the wrong place, so **** it. I filed down the jigsaw edges so now all I have to do is connect the dots, but every time I do, all I get are silhouettes of you; us. I see your face in a day more than I see faces in a week. It’s the reason I stand at the edge of rooftops, the reason all my mirrors are broken, the reason I wake up with my face floating in a pool. I wrote a paper this morning titled, “To Do Today:” It's crumpled somewhere on the floor because the only thing I’m really going

To Do Today:

-is miss you.

I dream a world where hunger-
A forgotten feeling guessed.
Where insides never rumble,
All the frigid bodies dressed.
I dream a world with Love
Tattooed across our open eyes.
With fingers locking one another
Until we’ve reached the skies.
When money keeps us warm,
As it lights the fire place.
And mouths in key of Kumbaya
While it burns without a trace.
With Hate removed from language  
As we teach the boys and girls
That every color of the rainbow shines-
Of such a dream, my world.