Blood is red
Veins are blue
Mix the two colors together,
and they will leave a bruise

I have been buried
and grown used to
utter darkness

But I dug myself
slowly
out of my own grave  

I could finally
kiss the sun,
and taste the flowers

I hope it lasts
I hope I last

I wrote a poem about her and
held it against my aching heart,
it sang to me a melancholic tune

Come,
and lay down your sorrow
along with my solitude,
my heart is yours to break  

Come!
let us abate this
intolerable agony
with lavender tea
and beautiful poetry

Keep thy head underwater—
staying afloat will not
quench this thirst of yours

Tonight,
I’ll keep an empty stomach
enough to carry
my deathlike solitude

along with a cup of
coffee by your company

At night,
aching and alone

I learned how to worship
the glittering fire of my mind

And in return,
it wrote this
poem for me

A home
can be a grave,
or a lover’s embrace

I want to return to a home
where the air smelled
of only her scent

I’ve found that love tears me
like a papercut
sharp enough to draw blood

And I hold a heart
that’s been torn apart,
but it still beats over the
rhythm of your name

The closest thing I can reach for
is this harmful glowing cigarette

I tend to worship the
things that burn me

You burn me

I burned for you,
but my love’s flame
was suffocating you

Our hearts were
scattered ashes,
I’m sorry I couldn’t
carry yours gently

My ugly mouth is stained
with cigarette kisses

It knows only the heat of a burning match
lighting a harmful kiss after another

I long
for my fingers to smell of her
and not the cigarette smoke

I whispered to my heart
filled with yearning,
“Be still”

Even if the curly ropes
of his hair
leaves you trembling
with an unsatisfiable hunger

“Be very still
dear anguished heart of mine”,
but as a leaf
I quiver
clinging desperately
by a bleak bough

For soon I’ll flutter
with the wind,
and fall down
along with my sorrows

As the fallen leaves
withered and loveless,
I shall crumble and disappear

At nights when I can’t utter
a word from my ugly mouth

My eyes pour out the words,
and I make a wish to be yellow

Tonight,
I am grieving my self

How I let my hair grow
How you let me go

How your cold absence burns
more than the heat of August,
more than a cigarette to my lips

I cannot sleep,
I think I’ve become my grief,
I admit you make me weak

I played their favorite songs,
I wrote them endless lines

I gave them my mind to haunt,
I used my wrists as bait,
and they were thirsty for blood

I shrink as they grow,
I dissolve as they emerge

A longing-pain
took hold of
my anguished heart
for I’ve missed you terribly

A rosebud
bursts into bloom,
and my thoughts
wander towards death

I heard you call my name in a dream
Did you need me, my dear?

I stayed up night after night
just to hear your I love you’s
just to hear your repetitive lies

Won’t you come back again?
Lie to me my dear darling one

I beg of you,
my dear,
my light,
in the shedding bleak midnight,
come to me with your wounds

Or at least get me a cigarette,
and leave me to drown along with my sorrows

1.
The boy lived his
childhood inside a casket
His own private hellscape

His face was distorted
by the age of eighteen,
he wished to be unseen

2.
The son of a glorified painter,
an unused color on a palette
               faded and forgotten

He’s been dead
to his father
before he died

3.
At last,
his wish came true,
no one saw the similarity
between his distorted face
and a Picasso’s painting


4.
Drawing road maps on his skin
was his only consolation,
he chose the color red
to mark his missing path

Scars between his thighs
like hidden treasures
centuries deep
away from people’s sight

5.
Each morning,
he awoke with thousand faces
none of which are the one
he started out with

The boy who is now a man
grew restless of crashing into all
those foreign versions of himself
every time he drifted to sleep

6.
After seven years of insomnia,
he stopped measuring happiness
based on how many nights he slept
A funeral rose in his heart as he wept

He muttered the word
suffering
as if it were
a prayer
or a lullaby

7.
The man longs
to be a boy again,
he couldn’t endure
another day inside—

the claustrophobic casket

—his head

Lone firefly
slowly burning away
Every repetitive lullaby shall linger,  
the boy aimed for a long night’s sleep

You have forsaken me
in May,
now I know that every
love is prone to decay

The day you left
Azrael himself wept

And the suffocating silence of your
absence was deeper than your grave

Death is like you,
silent, cold, and
doesn’t love me back

If you are death
then I long to be dead

Oh, what I would give for your grace,
if only you ask of me

I am an ocean of sacrifice when
it comes to you, my day and night

And so I shall bleed for you
till you ask me to stop

And I will still love you
even if you ask me to stop

And I will keep yearning for you
till my breathing stops

And if the day comes where
my love does not move you

Then I beg you to rid me of this old thing,
hold my heart, and bury it gently next to yours

I wrote a poem
and named it after her
because it ends too early

Will you help me carry my sadness
and throw it away in a deep well?

Will you visit me in a dream and help
me face my heart-wrenching dreams?

Will you wish me goodnight
before you leave me tonight?

Will you handle this foreign heart of mine,
or are you going to abandon it for another refuge?

All I ask is, will I ever be
welcome in your heart, again?

Dearest one to my heart,
you’re so far,
and I’ve forgotten what
the word warmth meant

Maybe you are  
the word warmth,

or maybe you are
the word silence

I talk to you,
but you don’t talk back

Those eyes,
those cold almond eyes,
that once were welcoming
at the sight of me,
like a warm welcoming home

But now they swallow me,
like the sea swallows
an old forgotten treasure

When my eyes met
hers for the first time,
they spelled the word “love”

If the filed of lavenders
sighs when it yearns for her scent

If the sunflowers worship
her raven hair, like the sun

If the moon weeps with
longing when she’s asleep  

If the cherries bleed in her
mouth like my heart when she left

If the sun rises and I don’t
see your face tomorrow

Know that you were the
only tender guest that
visited my fragile heart
without tearing it apart

And if the sun sets and dies,
and you’re not by my side

My eyes will forget how to sleep,
and I will remember you and weep

And if a year passes by
and I don’t hear your voice

My heart will no longer beat,
and I will surrender in defeat

I break myself with each line
I write because I can’t make
pain rhyme with happiness

Why shall I stay alive if death is my fate?

I can’t tell if I’m awake,
or not done dreaming

All I ask is, when will I awake
from this never-ending nightmare?

Perhaps death is
my only awakening

Being mentally ill is draining,
so is breathing,
so is staying alive,
so is being hopelessly hopeful

But I will decay gracefully
for this pain is more than I can bear

My head is always howling,
so I never sleep,
I keep on listening

The sun and I both
burn for his morning face

We await his cold almond eyes,
and crooked lips
to greet us each morning

But he’s sharing his light
with another soul,
but mine

I wish to know how many cigarettes
must I burn till my burning longing  
reaches his frigid heart?

I’m breathing in
all the breaths I lost
over your gaze,

and exhaling every poems  
that rhymed with your name

I never truly belonged to myself—
not even once
—ever since I met her.
I was hers to claim;
completely and painfully hers.
I began to disintegrate when
she no longer cared for me.
Every part of me she once traced
with her finger has crumbled.
Only her touch can mold me back together.

She wanted me to stay
with the living, and I obeyed.
I have the scars to prove it.
Look, darling, I am bleeding
and bumping full of life and desire.
Ask for me and you shall find me,
alive, hungry, and waiting for you.
Though it is my true wish to leave,
I will not disobey her command.
I am awaiting my punishment,
or reward for staying even after she left.
I wonder what my punishment would be
when she knows that I almost fell for another.
That I was someone else’s reason for staying.
That their breathing changed
the closer I got to their hungry flesh.
Even the deepest part of hell knows
that I still long for her impossible commands.
My knees are bleeding,
but I keep pleading for her words to posses me.

A heaven for an hour
for when I’m with her

A long desired kiss that
turns pain into a song
I have never heard

I would not long for death as
long as you remember my name

I tried holding the darkness,
and imprison it
in a forgotten place

Empty handed,
I am the darkness
and the forgotten place

How does one choose to forget themselves?
How do I eradicate myself in order to mend?
How do I rid myself of something that lives within me?

A vicious war,

I won—

I defeated myself

—so why does my heart still
beats with so much darkness?

Maybe my heart will
stop crying all night long,
and I will be able to sleep

Maybe you will stop
walking in my dreams
like you’re still mine

Maybe my eyes
will forget yours,
and I won’t weep

Maybe my skin won’t
crave your touch, and
my hand won’t ache
to be held by yours

Melancholy is creeping
its way back through
my veins forcing me
to open up old wounds

And I hope for
something more than
a sharpened knife,
and gushing blood

I will write one last
poem which bleed
from my wounds

And in its final verse,
I will write a rhyme,
and say, weeping,
what my heavy
heart truly feels

I do not know
how to grieve you

So I will weep
into my pillow

Hoping you’d hear
my gentle sobs,
and forget how to dream

Joy overcomes me
born out of agony

Still I am burning
underwater,
I cannot be saved

When my soul departs,
alone,
know that I am glad to go

The cigarette hasn’t left
my ugly mouth
ever since yours left mine

Now I cannot speak
without pouring
as a frightening  rainy night
I cannot love
without burning
my heart and yours
I cannot breathe
without gasping for your scent
I cannot think
without remembering
the meaning behind your name

And I cannot eat
without being consumed
by my unsatisfiable hunger

For you,
I starve

Be my moon
all-night long,
I promise I will never sleep

I long to sleep next
to your moonlight face,
if only you’d let me