The air your lips used to warm
as you'd breathe into mine,
has become too cold
from the space
you left between us.


Now,
I warm my own air
with flames
set from the peelings
of a burning heart
you threw away
in a rusted can.


I don't remember winter ever being so cold.

More often than is naught I carry the face of the villain.
Snared in this prison waiting for my turn to burn while
your fate is not so different from mine. My clocks still
yield some ticks and tocks yet before I go there stands a
few things you need to know:

They told me that your love was fatal, though failed to
hear the laughter of irony from behind their heads. They
cried tales that you were toxic and I could not save my
lips from curling. They said that your presence in mine
would design the suffering for those around. I was told
that you would leave me up in smoke as if God still
plays with dice. Your middling cigarette spends just the
beginning of their lives packing yet I waged it my
whole life just to spend its remnants with you. Addictive
by nature so let me take my pick of a million other lips
to secure truth that it is you I am addicted to.

I want you to simmer my skin when the world is cold,
I want to cast you brighter than a hundred suns hold,
I want to steal breath from your chest and place it in mine,
I want to make your heart stop like an eight-sided sign,
I want you to move my pistons and ignite my core,
I want you to saturate me as I lay on your shore,
I want to find what it is to go out with a bang,
I want to be that picture that fits in no frame.

I want to get you out of my head but you are
my song on repeat,
my hole that’s too deep,
my nights with no sleep,
my words when I speak.

Yet alas I hail from a pack known as Montague while
you bear the brand of Capulet. They will never render
us free in this life so when my time finally comes to a
burning halt, and my life flashes before my eyes, just
know that you will be the only thing I see in the next.

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.

Sometimes on the hardest of days,
I bear nothing but the softest thoughts of you.
Thoughts so rousing, they send adrenaline speeding down my highways,
stopping for nothing until every inch of me melts.
This isn’t your average fight or flight;
it's a fight that's for you, and a flight that's with you
to a place where the birds and the bees can't even reach.
For most, my heart can be a stone wall surrounded by a backbiting moat,
but somehow when you bring yourself to it,
the draw bridge gives way to you every time.
It’s frustrating; I have no control over what my heart desires,
but for some reason, it chose you the moment yours played hopscotch with mine.
Skipping beats is only the tip of the iceberg:
I could bleed out my entire fountain of youth if that’s what it takes.
And yeah, if you scale it up to the waters of the world,
my fountain will make only a single drop,
but I’ll be ****** if that drop doesn’t pass through
all the flaming hoops it takes to land on your lips.  
I will make sure that you never forget the taste,
and the ripples it forms shall never lie still in you.
Ripples that in time will manifest into incredible waves
that will alter the very ones your mind creates.
It’s said that the brain waves of love and insanity are identical to one another,
and it just so happens I have a longboard that can fit the both of us.
I’ve never been that great at love, but I’ve always been the best at insanity,
and if you ever lose your balance,
my hands will always catch you before you’re ever out of reach.
So what are you waiting for? The water’s fine.
So paddle on over to a place I like to call "existence",
and let’s ride the swell of this swollen heart.

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.

Her eyes
Her eyes 
Oh those eyes...
They create something of a solar eclipse
A celestial rarity you may only look upon
When the universe permits
Rare and yet I’ve been told not to stare directly
Into the seductive light
Which makes it all the more tempting to take a peek
And become hypnotized
Once I look away from them
They become burned
Burned into my mind
So even with eyes shut I can’t help but feel her
Much like the moon dreams of her long lost lover
She catches briefly only at dusk and dawn
Living from the shadows
Of the very thing that makes her shine
To me this is not mere coincidence
And like the Fates I do not play with dice
When a jigsaw is tossed in the air
And all of its pieces land into their rightful place
I do not see chance
I see providence

                           I see the impossible

                                                     ­       I see . . . you, staring back into me

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 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.

I walked across the bridge of your nose to connect the constellations
on your face. I was blinded by the solar eclipses in your eyes and
wound up where your universe began and I held it in my hand. I felt
it pulse life into the very edges of your galaxies.

Drawn I was with gravity to each of your hotspots. Running in
circles by the natural laws of physics, physically pulling me through
the natural laws of attraction. Deep-rooted into your wormhole,
taking me to another time and place, I could not tell you when or
where I was from.

Thwarting my universe into chaos by the 2nd Law of
Thermodynamics then breaking the 1st by creating something in
me from nothing. Ripping stars from cold space and shooting
them into the deep clusters once left empty. Exciting these *****
of flame into super nova’s scorching me from beginning to end.

Your telescopic lens would discern who I was and who I was not,
searching for truth no matter the distance. Altering my planets to
align with yours, spawning systems upon systems and then some
more, discovering rich life where none would explore, then leaving
your footprints upon more shore.

On that night the universe was silent. That same night you were
here and then you were gone, tipping the entropic scales back
from the first law you broke. I forever blocked out the moon so her
waves couldn’t wash what little was left of you. While she maybe
the only other knowing just how deep craters can crush.

Many my suns have died since then, where once my world kept
spinning has now completely stopped. Left with debris smashed
from a time that used to be. Falling slowly through cold and
empty space. Continually searching the universe for what science
calls foolish.

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

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.

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.

I will not slam my gavel on the splinters buried in the back of your mind that drive you insane. Let me pluck them instead only to fill their empty graves with seeds that will grow their own food for thought. Let us spit our souls on our palms and be unafraid to shake hands. I want to become sick with your expansive mind so I may develop immunity to the wretched virus of the narrow majority.

And when you can’t handle any more shut doors locking in your face, grab onto the rope I drop by your side and I will pull you to a new hallway of opportunities. When your back is up against the wall, I’ll remind you to close your eyes and breath because the next time they open the wall will have sunk into the shadow that you yourself have laid on the ground.  

I can’t stand knowing. I have to walk it and exercise it, much like a muscle breaking its former self down only to rebuild itself stronger, and keep it moving because the place where my awareness lands will be the cage where it sleeps. So lend me some of your mental crack and lets find our own over this great wall of the unknown and see if we can’t break down the impossible together.

I remember a time when we knew how to fly.
It was a feat that just came to us out of thin air,
and oh how thin the air really felt when we took
off. Our finger would cross, cross like the stitching
of a hot air balloon that knew no bounds, filled with
the air we exchanged into each other’s lungs, and
propelled by the pulsing flames of our hearts. Your
sparkling eyes were intoxicating whenever they met
mine, they bore the same sparkle as the wishing star
in the sky I used to put all of my hope and dreams
into. Every instance our lips locked into each other,
whenever your mellifluous hair sashayed by my
nose, or each time you cradled my weary head to
your *****, the more our wings grew; grew to a
point where together we could soar to heaven off
of a single push. We danced through marshmallow
clouds as our wings tickled the sky. You carved your
name across the top of my heart then tucked the
needle of a compass beneath it so I always could find
my way home. We never knew where we were going
but trusted the winds to take us where we needed to be.
We never turned our backs to the skies for it was our
refuge, it was our entirety. Together in the far reaches
of space, boundless and free, the world below became
a place we had long since forgotten.


I remember a time when there was gray in the sky, a
gray that hued to black. Together we could not
recognize these skies and quickly became unsolicited.
The livid winds and the bitter clouds would pierce our
ears as they shrieked in malignance. A storm had
brewed and the rain was falling. The drops snuck
through the cracks between our hands. The harder we
grasped for each other the more we slipped until the
stitching our fingers once made became frayed then torn;
we were disconnected now. The whirlwinds then casted us
further and further apart until you were shrouded by
darkness. I was naked and alone save for the grief I then
became, facing the murkiest region of the storm. The clouds
I once frolicked with now spat a deathly light in my path
until there was nothing I could do and nowhere I could turn.
I wished to my star but I could not see your sparkle anymore.
I was at the mercy of the skies I once called home however
mercy was not to be arranged. The bright light paralyzed me
hard and fast straight through my heart, gouging out the
needle that always brought me back to you. I fell down from
the sky at speeds greater than I had ever flown up. Crippled
from above I was laying on the surface, with not even a scent
of familiarity. My once trusted winds fed the flames that now
scorched my majestic wings and took with it the fallen ashes
they sprinkled. The name on my heart I once cherished became
a curse, an endless reminder of what I could never find again,
where I could never go again. I laid there utterly vulnerable with
a single hand outstretched, reaching for the world I once knew,
reaching with hollowed gaps between the fingers you once
spanned. Over time the weeds I now rested in became hungry,
swallowing me into the dirt. I am consumed wholly to this prison
now save for the hand that reaches, reaches for a place that has
long since forgotten.

I left a trail of breadcrumbs for your lips to find
but they were hungry for something I couldn’t create.
I was hiding in a place that wasn’t hard to find
and I just,
I just wanted someone to take the bait.
But when the time came that you caught me there wasn’t champagne, there wasn't bouquets- no.
I looked behind to tag you back but you were already ten steps in the other way.
And to me this was play
but to you it was probably just a game.
We were a picture that couldn’t fit into any frame
or a fire that couldn’t be contained, it was all the same.
Just like the very place you called pleasure became the same room I called pain.

I spent my entire life chasing shooting stars
thinking that I could make all my wishes come true,
stopping my feet here and there just to then try and
catch my breath.
I was always chasing but never very good at pacing.
I got battles with my mind erasing while my heart keeps retracing
and in that time
on the assembly line
they smacked me with a sticker that said, “Replacing”.

You see I was born with fingers that were small and stubby,
stretching out trying to grab the answers I would always come up short on.
My heart’s been known to skip beats but sometimes as it skips,
it gets caught on something and trips
head over heals down a black hole that swallows then spits
me into another time and place where you are stripped;
from sight misplace, but I still chase
because no one ever taught me how to land in space.

And if you took my legs I would crawl through wet concrete,
and if you took my arms I would roll to a mountain peak,
and if my body is taken this heart would still beat
because when you left that home
you forgot to turn off the radio
so all of our songs still play on repeat,
you can hear them through the walls and down my streets
where everyone else still hears it too
but I,
I was the idiot for giving my only set of keys to you.

I’ve spent my entire life trying to close gaps
that I probably had no business closing in the first place.
But even if I’m not the one who wins the race,
or finds the foot this glass slipper longs to embrace,
or catches a shooting star flying in cold space
I know that being here is better than being there,
that living today is better than dying tomorrow,
and even if,
even if these tiny talking hands never get a reply
that it sure beat the hell out of never giving it a try.

Time has passed now and I return to the field from whence I came,
though this field is not mine; it can’t be. The lush emerald grass
has transformed into a stony taupe, frail and wilted. DID I
ANGER YOU? Not a crack of soft cerulean can be seen from
above. The warm rays that once consumed me are lost in transit
by the hoary locks above.

HAVE I MADE YOU SAD? I set gaze towards my giant cedar.
Not you too. Rotten from the root up to the decayed branching.
The scent burns my nostrils and taints my lungs. DOES IT HURT?
My legs give weight to the ground while my body follows. I lay
there, cheek pressed against the haggard soil, until all is blurred.

I wake to find my head at your foot; a rose in the sea of weeds. My
lips soar to yours, and they dance a fiery tango once again. Oh how
I’ve yearned to dance with you. My weary eyes unlock and
bleed to not meet yours. WERE YOU REAL? I look towards my
sole to find a tombstone. The name is mine. *WAS I?

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.

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.

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.

It’s been said that infatuation makes for a fast spiral down to
sightlessness.  But do you say the blind cannot see? I bear no
mind to mere optics for I need not the sense to possess the
sight. I have your radiance with me, branded to the backs of my
lids for I cannot help but have you always until the next time
I look upon you. With a clutch of my hand you have me at
your will. You present this present with your presence and I
shall honor this with my eyes, never to shield whilst I have
you before me. Consumed I become as you lay me down
beneath the leaves. Take all you will from me for I shall
remain exposed to your desires.

My gaze wandered up and found the leaves on fire. There
was no smoke; there was no fear for we had been the fire
all along. The flames of yours and mine together had
consumed the air of our yesterdays, leaving nothing to look
back on and ceasing the urge to look forward; we were here,
existent, ready to ignite once more. This surge required
naught save for the breaths of yours and mine to chance;
your breath compelling this sealed backdraft longing for
indulgence, growing wild with every touch, every scent,
every taste of your delicate tongue as it wrapped in mine.
The embers knew nothing of destruction but rather renewal
of that which I had longed for.

I once believed it foolish to feel the same with another
synchronously. A belief I now find fault in for just as the
two flames who dance incoherently; once they touch they
become unified in their brilliant engagement, creating a
distinct cohesion that most will undoubtedly remain unaware
to. It is that moment, that paradise we search for. A sensation
that last a moment but for those without sight, a single
moment becomes the ultimate reality of eternity; a single slice
in our whole of existence which we stay hungry for. So look
no further for I am close at hand. We have already set this
world ablaze and altered the realm of our tomorrows. It is now,
in this very moment where we shall get a taste of eternity and
there will never be anyone more adequate to share this paradise
with other than that who makes me sightless.

Loving you is like realizing I’m the deep blue Ocean,
Vast on the surface and immeasurable underneath
Without the proper tools. And you, you are the
Science that solves the reason why perfection is not
Beyond the grasp of some humans to hold. You are
The mythology of Artemis, by the grace of your moon,
Molding my body in motion to the pull of your light.
Forever I will reach. You are the life that lives inside
Me, the very essence of that I hold. Trillions of tiny
Heart beats merging to a single pulse that carries
Them home. You are my genius and I your canvas by
Night, as you rest your colors on me, I return them
Back as a gift that never dies each and every day. You
Are the laws of physics from which I send the pieces
Of my surface to the heavens in attempts to touch
Your glow before they have fallen back unto me. And I,
I am simply the Ocean deep and blue, but you are my
Moon that always was and always will be. Always
Running and sometimes hiding but despite everything
You are, you can never hold absent from my sight nor
Soul. You were forever meant to circle me, and I forever
To reach for you, and together we were created to become
A force that transcends the boundaries of life itself.

It feels the days have been weeks, the weeks have been months, and the months have been years since we last met. And though we have left each other, the river of love flowing through my veins have never stopped running for you. I remember times when the sun rose to wake me it was you the first thing that caught my gaze as the hunter for his doe at the first of fall. The times when you were the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes to the melody of moon; I could not dream without you there. The times I would stroke your smooth curves and praise the One who created the beauty that is yours and yours alone. The times your scent made my pores throb and eyes wide, a scent we shared whenever you let me have you, a scent I longed when you were gone from me. The times my lips would touch you and tongue would taste you casting me without breath in throat and sweet air in lungs to the instance of choking; ironic as the world surrounding us the drowning while we the afloat. With you before me the world as we knew it vanished I could not begin to tell what century I was from. There is no need for time with love as eternal as this.

And yet I wait,

Wait for the day I will have you back in my presence, back in my hands, back to my lips, uplifting the very existence of my being. The day when I once again will be able to reach, reach far into the depths of my pocket and summoning the $4.31 it take to see you once more. . . my ever sweet breakfast burrito.

I slap wax on a hand that’s had its share of crinkles and callouses
as I look in the mirror to mold myself into something out of a GQ:
Man of the Year magazine. I look at my watch and its 8:42. I look
back to the mirror and see something that is not the caliber of a
man but more of a frightened boy buckling at the knees and
shaking at the wrists. The walls behind me start to liquefy and
soon dissolve while the florescent bathroom lights flicker in and
out of existence. I rub my eyes as I manage to hear knocking at
the door over the boombox playing on my dresser drawer. But I
can’t seem to move away from this boy I see right in front of me,
a boy who’s never done anything like this before.


I turn my head to look over and it’s her. Her name is Brittney and
she is the first and only love of my life, though she may not know
it yet. The rainbow colored lights are flashing in her direction to
the sound of the booming bass. I take a look down at my sprinkler
head hand. It has begun to melt into hers, molding ten fingers into
one fiery fist protesting against all the cold voices that tell me, "I
can’t do this." It is a time of swing sets and swing dancing while
long before empty bottles and bar romancing.


She say’s, “It’s getting pretty hot in here” and I say “A wise person
once told me to ‘take off all your clothes’ when that happens”. She
smiles at me and I look away because I’m scared she’s going to look
directly in my soul and figure me all out like, “Where was the fun
in that?” My window of opportunity only opens when something
else reaches in and grabs her attention by the hair. Only then can I
be the mortal to ever look into the face of a goddess whose head is
just preoccupied. The Dj masterfully is mixing music from a bland
radio driven generation to create the perfect stage for an offbeat New
York teenager who is slowly finding out that he has just as much
rhythm as he has shame.


I get a call on my cricket phone from a best friend who couldn’t
make it that night, as if to say he was telling me to grow wings of
my own. I reject the call needless to say and catch that it’s 8:42 and
in that moment I hear someone say, “Baby you’re all that I want.”
I look to Brittney and say, “I don’t know how to slow dance.” She
pulls me to the floor and fastens my hands to her hips as we start to
glide gently from side to side and I hear that same voice resonating,
“I’m finding it hard to believe, we’re in heaven”.


Born as a natural leader though grew up as a follower, I begin to
dig up my roots so we can float to a place where no other human
can find us. A step to left and then to the right as I carry her head
over my shoulder with clouds tickling our toes with every step of the
way. Prickling chills from being up so high make their way
kneading down my spine. A white light flickers behind her head and
I seriously ask myself, “Could I be dead?” Naked bodies chest to
chest and cheek to cheek as two flames becoming one with
heartbeats in sync; a heart that has never beaten the same because
this song never truly ended.


That night marked the largest recorded meteor to ever impact the
world since the extinction of the dinosaurs. I burrowed this lady
closely in newfound wings as we fell from clouds beyond the
atmosphere smashing us back into dancing shoes, rattling the
footing of our tomorrows today and shaking the foundation of
where we now stand. The walls behind her begin to liquefy and
soon dissolve. I look to the only window in this building and catch
a reflection of myself in it, though I do not find the same boy I
once saw before. I see a man with purpose, a man without fear; I
see a man who would take on the world if the challenge arose,
and a man who had finally earned the right to say, “I’m free.” I
leave her hips to rub my eyes in clarity and as my pupils begin to
focus I make out florescent lights that keep flickering in and out
of what appears to be my bathroom mirror. I hear knocking on
my door faintly over the boombox playing on my dresser drawer
while I look down at my watch to see that it is 8:42. I take one last
look in the mirror and I remind myself that there truly is no better
time than now.

I was lost. Lost in the echoes of the ancient
rhythms pleading to play, sifting it’s vibes
throughout me. I become a mannequin,
with strings that do not pull but glide as a
breeze to a snowflake away on a blissful
journey, to places unknown but ever
welcoming. In the midst of this transit a
single wave, unique from the lot, kissed the
shoreline of mine. With connected vibes I
felt her beat slide up my limbs, nest into
my flesh, and wrap around my core as lush
ivy rising towards the light just to fuel my
fire. Two rhythms that crossed for one night,
one place, one time; One. Hovering on
limber limbs I reached into you and we
retuned the frequency of our hearts in sync.
Catching each other on every missed beat
we unified till we became a dynamism that
could make the planets align. Your waves
tickled at my toes, trickled up my spine, and
coursed through my lips erupting to a
frequency that birthed a super nova, killing
our very sense of survival, leaving us with
nothing other than Being.


I am still lost. The season’s winds have now
spread us away from One as two leaves
from the same tree that never fully lost
their color. Yet I still feel the rumble through
my bones when you echo your thoughts of
me from where ever you may be. In that
moment I vanish once more in our limbo
where time and space are at a stalemate, a
place where the impossible looms, a home
where Being awaits. It is said that these
waves never cease to move, that they
traverse to the very edge of the universe only
to bounce back; forever changing while
changing all in its path.

Where are they going?

What are they looking for?

Why did You find me?

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.

The place you stand in casts a loathsome light from behind you as you gaze to the Mirror. A salted tear is shed followed by many down into the loch you have locked yourself into; drowning. What has the Mirror said to you today? I wish I could understand it.

The Mirror has rendered your wings useless, crippling you with a deadly snare it has embedded in your mind. A snare you could free yourself from with tools you’ve always possessed but never knowing how to use.

I reach inward to pull my heart out and smash the Mirror once and for all. The shards cut deep but nowhere near as cavernous as the cuts your razor edged tears have when they used to fall from you’re calloused eyes down into my chest.

The Mirror, now in a thousand pieces, must be screaming in your ears as you try desperately to put it back together. An act that is meek for you from the life you’ve lived befriending such a foe disguised as your comrade.  

It’s a wonder how one tries to fix the broken long before they realize that they themselves are the broken. The fragmented mirror cannot speak the same again to you but only display you it’s rightful self, showing you the truth.  

The truth that we’re all fragmented; no one was created to a perfect perfection but rather perfection due to an all-pervading and ever powerful imperfection.  One last tear is glazed down onto your lips. The sweetest taste you have ever savored.

My dear, sometimes you must shut out all other light in order to discover the Light that sets you free from the prisons you once existed in. Walk with me now into the darkness until we find ourselves in the ever awaiting Light of freedom.

You set the bait and I never let go,
I never wanted so.
A fish out of water;
I’m suffocating in the same room you breath calmly in.

Moving hopelessly alone on reflex
I’m going mad in this state but lie still
every time you touch me.

Your knife digs deep
though like pain is something I have become accustomed to.
Cutting away at the surface,
then to the core,
digging deeper and deeper where I really feel you.

Before you’ve truly experienced me
you coax and cover me with flavors of your own,
as if I’m like the rest of them,
as if I won’t taste different on your tongue.

Burning from the inside out as you cook me to your liking,
I can take the heat
so long as I know I will melt inside you.

But
when you gutted me you forgot about my heart,
maybe because it was too hard to find,
maybe I was saving my best for last, or  
maybe I hid it because I knew you didn’t know how to handle it yet.

It’s all I have,
it’s all I’ve ever had
and I gladly would rest it upon your lips even but for a moment
and when that single moment finally arrived,

you spat me to the floor,
swallowed what remained
just to **** me out the next day.  

I don’t know why I thought this would have a different ending.

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.

The moment when you couldn’t wake up in the mornings.
The moment your hands stayed cold when I bound them in mine.
The moment you made dates with the TV screen.
The moment you forgot to call and all the countless times you had no service.
The moment you became too busy and every single time you made me wait.
The moment you needed a cigarette every 10 minutes.
The moment your lips forgot how to dance with mine.
The moment your shoulder couldn’t bear the weight of my arm around it.
The moment your eyes got narrower and your brows stiffened.
The moment your hugs cut me too much slack.
The moment you stopped getting the chills.
The moment your heavy cheeks couldn’t budge a smile.
The moment your heart stopped skipping beats.
The moment you froze when I told you that I loved you.
The moment fear became your vice.
The moment you hid behind closed doors.
The moment I had more in common with strangers.
The moment I became embarrassing to be around.
The moment when you needed drugs for a good time
The moment you fought me just to feel something.
The moment I was just like my father and the moment you cursed my mother.
The moment you slammed the door in my face and the moment  ‘I’m sorry’ left your vocabulary.
The moment the bruises healed.
The moment the word ‘give’ was spelled t- a- k- e.
The moment your dreams were only visible in sleep.
The moment I realized that you weren’t worth another moment of my time.

                                                               ­                   .   .   .

I gave you everything and you came out with nothing, which now is the very thing you are to me.

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.

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?

The stars above speak to me in many tongues and many ways.
I wish to know what these gods express, but what they speak I cannot say.

For alas it is only that I sense the magic that engulfs my soul,
from lengths undefined with this divine
entity that I do behold.

Their textures tease with mystic vibes,
only to know what I cannot describe.

Knowing I will never reach, never touch, never hold, never kiss.
Never…. Never.

This communal love is endless and I shall never give knee to ground,
my reach extends while they transcend,
the truth while lost but someday found.

Many moons have passed while yet I set my gaze aloft,
in faith I know not of while my hope inside be doffed.

In hopes for the unknown.
Unknown; what do I know?
The fire burning I must show,
for maybe I was all alone.

Is this right that by the nights I dream to dream a dream hath lost?
But was it waste now that that I face the dream to what that dream hath cost?

Nay….Nay.
Or perhaps I have been left astray.

My head fatigued, my eyes so weary,
my senses fade into the dreary.
This vessel is aged no longer gauged
for this world I part sincerely.

My stare now lowers to a shudder and view what be imaginary,
my reason blown, my brain has snapped, to view the scene that’s quite contrary.

Be you a star before my eyes in space no longer improvised?
I wish one kiss then be dismissed
unto unfaithfulness demise.

The radiance embraced my depth unto a fathom and time that seem prolonged,
and when I woke the truth was known that I had been shining all along.

From up above, there is indefinite mystery; while I stand
below I know all there is to be, so I commence building. It
is magnificent, an unparalleled structure soaring beyond
optical range, and impossible for all to overcome, save for
the keeper of this wall. In it I protect my sacred waters, for
none to touch, for none to see.

From up above, you gaze at my majesty with a disdain
beyond conviction. You soar to me and swathe me with
your wings, a kindred love you share, although I know not
who you are. You cradle me as we rise up above, a vantage
I could never have fathomed.

From up above you counsel me to destroy my wall, which
has trapped my waters for far too long; to let my waters
flow freely and engulf all around. Some will float; other will
perish. Such is the way it meant to be you tell me as our lips
meet for an enchanting exchange. Your lush wings then
extend open as I drop from your cradle unto my waters from
up above. I remember.

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

The winds of your soul echoed great lengths to meet the mill that pumps my being. Oh what great lengths the maker propels these gales into discovering their rightful place. Though the tempest hath no home, nor does it settle; it passages within us, each of us, never once forgetting where or who it has given life to. This provides you with a feeling of familiarity, a feeling you treasure for it is a treasure to behold. A sublime gift unnoticed by those blind to the sensation, deaf from reality, and dumbstruck in the universe; they may never know.

The breath of yours and the breath of mine met as we fell victim to the storms. Destitute but not afraid; we embraced the coming of each other. The storms quenched the long forgotten drought in our hearts, exalting their life from the grounds to the infinite. We parted from one and other with a final breath of our being- we were born once again; born into the light of love.

Shine with me.

You have copied and pasted yourself into my memory without my
conscious authorization. My data storage could surpass that of a
super computers, a near infinite amount of space for whatever I
want saved, except you have rewritten my libraries upon libraries
of me with your animation; as if I now cannot run without you
constantly there. When I try to open the program of my heart it’s
blocked by the virus you lured me with. I used to trouble shoot in
circles wasting gigaseconds at a time trying to find ways of deleting
you out of my hardware. I’m constantly stuck in a loop of trial and
error trying to decode and compute the internal damage you’ve
done in efforts to restore my old programming. I tried to find
solutions with other users but you act as my administrator,
dictating what I have access to. The folder named, “My History”
has been renamed to “Our History” with every face you’ve made,
every word you’ve said, and every instance we’ve plugged into each
other being cached for immediate viewing making it all
too easy to only think of you; I cannot upload a single thought
without you in it.  I have grown sick, going from constant states
of freezing to overheating since the day you crashed me. This is
not something I can just sleep off. This is not something I can
just shutdown everything for.

I cannot edit you.

I cannot erase you.

I cannot wipe myself clean of you.

                                                           ­                 I have been overrun by you.
                                                                ­           And the truth is, I have been
                                                            ­               searching for exactly this
                                                                           since the day I was built.

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.

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 jump onto a heart warm as sun in cold space,
Rumbling like the earth moved in rough quake.

I begin up the cord in front of my wake,
And grab onto scales that rattle like snake.

Will every tug and move I make,
Harder than the last, my own heart that breaks.

Almost to the end I dangle like flake,
Wonder to myself if this is a mistake.  

I look back to the heart, naught but pain and ache,
Longing for someone to pull on the brake.

My hands clench tight and nails like rake
I yield a breath with a whole world at steak,

I pull out the cord that gives life but fake.
A life that has coveted its own to take.

Expelled now my doubts from a feeling opaque,
The heart now can sleep with its soul wide awake.