What we have is pretend.
We don't make love, we make believe.
I'm just learning this now,
But you,
You've known it for quite some time.
The trick is, you can switch out of this--
Turn it on and off.
Differentiate.
You're the girl who plays with dolls,
discovering the similar power you hold over
Real-life boys and these
Plastic, inanimate objects.
I'm the kid who wears his Superman costume
To school everyday,
and truly, honestly, whole-heartedly believes
that if he tries hard enough,
he will fly.

I've built a fine collection of scars on my elbows and knees.

She says,
“Speak to me in poetry.
Baby, I want to see what I look like through your eyes.”
And immediately,
Like ripping through each word Webster put in his book,
I strip my vocabulary of every cliché about love and beauty
And loosely string them together with shaking hands,
Which my hands have grown accustom to.
I want to tell her how every time she enters a room
My stomach does this funny thing where it ties itself into knots
And my heart seems to start beat-boxing
Like it grew up in the grid-locked street blocks.
But I don’t tell her this
Because if I were to let these words out of my mouth
I know that there’s a good possibility that I will look like a crazy person.
I want to tell her that I just want her to be impressed.
To look upon me with longing in her eyes
And I’d steal her breath away like that no man ever has
And keep it in a locket concealed in my buttoned-up back pocket.
But I don’t tell her this
Because, honestly, I can’t impress with they way I dress
Or my white boy dance moves,
And the only time I ever stole anything I got caught.
I want to tell her that if her toes go
Somewhere that mine can’t follow,
I’ll sacrifice my eyes to the sky
So that I can see her every day when the sun sets west.
But I don’t tell her this
Because I couldn’t hold her with my arms dressed in flames,
And truth be told, one dose of her a day isn’t enough to get me my fix.
And so we sit in that teasing mix
Of fixated eyes exchanging
A lustful desire to unlock jaws and collide our lips,
In a beautiful disarray of tongue and teeth.
And the calming restraint to let the moment linger
Just a little longer
Because in just a little longer
This moment will be perfect.
And I am silent.

And He says,
“Speak to me in poetry.
Brother, I want to see what the world looks like through your eyes.”
Time and time again I’ve humbled myself by denying the fact that
I am extraordinary
For reasons that only clear eyes can see,
Like this man,
He seems to be more fed up with the repeated routine of each and every yesterday
And envies my hope in tomorrow so he asks to borrow my insight.
I want to tell him that on those days when nothing looks familiar,
I wind up fasting;
Eating nothing but my passed down last name.
See, that’s how I meditate on my individuality,
But I don’t tell him this
Because God knows I can get starved for company
And borrow philosophies from question marks.
I want to tell him that there is beauty all around us.
It’s in every breath that’s whispered through pursed lips
And it drips down from the sky,
That’s all rain is.
But I don’t tell him this
Because sometimes even I watch the world
Through eyes filled with acid.
I want to tell him that the only thing that limits us
Is the shackles that we keep strapped down
For safety’s sake
But if we want, we could break free and run towards better days
With our heartbeats pounding in our ears.
But I don’t tell him this
Because maybe we are just two people
Who have nothing more to offer than sparks
In a world taken with fire.
And so I retire my voice
Since I don’t want to make a liar of myself,
I’m no street corner gospel
False profiteer
Selling twisted rapture to any lonely ear
Willing to empty their pockets out of desperation.
And I am silent.

She says,
“Speak to me in poetry.
Baby, I want to see what I look like through your eyes.”
And He says,
“Speak to me in poetry.
Brother, I want to see what the world looks like through your eyes.”
And They say,
“Speak to me in poetry,
We want to see what life looks like through your eyes.”
But since my tongue is tongue tied
And I currently don’t mind going blind for a little while
The only thing I can think to do
Is smile and hand them my glasses.

It always started with a kiss.
A kiss that shocked her from her lips to her hips
and sent her reeling down rabbit holes
searching for something that sings like hallelujah.
But by the time Gloria regained consciousness
to the sound of a needle riding an empty groove,
all she found was the window he'd left open,
And a bone;
A marrow-filled keepsake abandoned on the sill.
She wrapped it in ripped gossamer from
her grandmother's wedding veil and
placed it neatly in the closet
with all the others.
And as she reapplied the crimson lipstick,
brushed too much blush over sunken cheeks,
and outlined her eyes in waterproof mascara,
she felt the draft more than ever before.
"A home can be an awfully lonely place for love..."
she murmured to her autumn tree self,
then she stepped out of the door, lips puckered
and primed of every proof that she was
anything but a ******.

One tube of lipstick, a femur, two collarbones
and half a jaws worth of teeth later,
she sat sprucing up to that same
skipping scratch of a static-air record and
pushing the thought of how her grandmother died
alone
to the back of her mind,
as she tied perfect bows with the ribbons of veil.
"A bed can be an awfully lonely place for love..."
she whispered to her bare-finger self.
Then once more, she slipped into a city
whose slogan read:
Take it easy, it's hard beind human these days

After each season changed in a dozen different ways,
and her summer-Merilyn  blonde had
withered winter-newspaper grey,
Her knuckles and joints baptized in arthritis,
She could hardly bring the religion of her hands to
raise up the ribcage, fresh enough to
still smell of morning breath.
But this time she did not retire
to the closet turned mausoleum.
Instead, she emptied the tomb of all
these ex-lovers' left overs,
all the bare-bones of the best parts of
these midnight escape artists
who never fully got away,
and Gloria made for herself a makeshift man.
One that would never keep her warm,
but would never leave her
frozen by an open window sill either.
One with an empty chest that offered no treasures,
but didn't have the guts to chase the morning-afters.
"A heart can be an awfully lonely place for love."
she mouthed to her silent-breasted self,
as she bent down for one last
unconducted, dusty kiss.

“Just loosen your grip a little,”
Fiddling fingers say to me
Quite condescendingly,
“If you hold on to something
Too tight for too long
One day you’ll open your fist
And realize you’ve crushed it.”
The breath that carries his words
Buries this stone heart like a seed
And parts the rising steam of the
Teacup he raises up to steady lips,
Of which my quivering jaw grows
Envious.
“That’s *******.”
I spit the venom back at him,
Proving my limited vocabulary
And badly developed “come-back” skills.
It makes me ill how much he tries to pretend that
Everything is fine.
“Everything is going to be
Fine”
He says,
“Everything has a reason.”
And I hate him for it.
But I can’t hide the upright curves of a smile
When he tells me
We all make an impact.
We all buckle at our knees in the rain,
Fists full with parts of our soul
That we wish to add to this the world.
It’s why we leave behind fingerprints
On everything we touch.
It’s proof of our existence
And a reminder that once,
We cared enough to reach out and
Make an exchange with the things we love.

But I counter it with,
“Fingerprints can be washed away
In the time it takes a snowflake
To melt in your palm.
In the split second of a gunshot.”
It’s too risky to wear our hearts on our sleeves
These days
So instead we push it down
Our solar plexus
And compress it like coal.
We fill the hole in our chest
With cyanogen-filled cigarettes
And nicotine best guesses.
We doorbell-ditch the addresses
Of our Demons in Disguise
With makeshift wings and sky blue eyes.
Taunting them with kid tricks
But always running
Because we’re too afraid
To strip them of their masquerade.
Naive to the fact that it might be more
Than just child’s play.
So I tell him it’s okay
To admit that he’s still afraid of the dark.
That we need to strap ourselves
With something harder than skin.
Because this world is hazardous,
I learned it the first time I saw my father cry.
That’s why I sit here with
White-knuckled hands clutching to
Everything that I can call my own
And not opening my eyes
Because I dream better with them closed.
So I won’t loosen this grip
Because it seems so simple to slip
Through these fingertips.

And so he sits.
And so I shake.
And he sits, and I shake
And we take that deadpan silence of a symphony
Right before the orchestra strikes the first chord
And we make honesty with it.
We make honesty like,
Honestly, the next sounds
To escape our mouths
Are going to be the most important words I’ve ever heard
So let's make them worth it.
We make honesty
Like concentration camp *******
Because it’s how we still feel alive
And a way to say, “**** the world
I’ve still got something it can’t take.”
And while I can’t shake this moment of vulnerability
He draws a hand up to my chest,
Pulls out a breath,
And dissects the swollen god-complex.
He filters the air
I hinder to bear upon my heavy shoulders
And slips it back, past cracked crimson lips
To ignite this sarcophagus with life.
“Everything is going to be
Fine.”
He says,
“Everything has a reason,
So explore the world with both hands before of you
Feet making a rhythmic beat on the
Black paved street
As you follow broken yellow lines,
Racing headlights to the horizon.
And leave behind a trail of fingerprints
So you’ll never forget where you’ve been.”

How many echoes did you count
before your night light burnt out
and the sheets were no longer enough
to keep your teeth from dancing?

For me, it was November
when I found my eyelids
violet and blue.
I dreamt that I knew you
before there was much to know,
and now I know that on Sundays
you still sew patches
to your elbows and knees.
I dreamt of your streets
in the folds of my palm,
but I've got to say,
I always expected more footsteps.
And so I let the echoes go by
and never bothered to catch them
because they never spelled my name.

For me, it was November
when I stood barefoot in the alleyway
Armed with open-book thoughts
in a watered-down town.
Keeping the beat for bad company.
Wandering eyeless in this city
casting sharp, midnight shadows
on the backsides of blindfolds,
and holding their hands
and aligning our backbones.
And Howling.
Howling
the way wolves praise the moon.
Wake up, you *******,
you've got your whole lives ahead of you.
Bend your bed frames into
the shape of an untamed altar and
celebrate Today,
Because it's all we
will ever really have.
And alters come in many different shapes
there's no right answer
so stop looking for it.
Just dance your feet from
bed springs to concrete.
and remind Tomorrow that
it has to wait it's ******* turn.
We walk blind to remind ourselves
that night lights only illuminate
the reasons why not to try.

For me, it was November
when the Sunday,
curved-spine crawlers
begged us to sleep.
But I let the echoes go by
and never bothered to catch them
because they never spelled my name.

From a distance designed for instant intimacy you begged me
to satisfy your earthbound,
dirt-grounded fallen-star needs with hands carved from the Moon.
Writhing between wildflowers and weeds
I danced my discretion on the definition of ecstasy;
pleasing your pleas with partial gravities—
like Atlas with sweating palms.
And I felt compelled to apologize as habit has trained me to
for loving you less like great lovers do, and more like
a high school “C” student who can’t remember the answers to the test.
But you kissed me mute.
We are daunted by the constant reminder—
from history books,  reality television shows and A.M. radios—
that, today, fame is a cannonball’s shot away
and insanity is as volatile as gunpowder.
But you,
You told me that beneath a sky bombarded by the broadcasts of bad news,
my skin made you convinced that the rest of the world were skeletons.
So under the thunder and crack of artillery facts,
for a moment we dawned the ignorant crowns of amnesia and
allowed ourselves to forget, as you let
your fingertips orbit the cores of my crater-faced palms.

We’ve both
(at the same time but never together)
mourned empty shells filling themselves with liquor and beer
at mid-morning barstools.

When we talk, we don’t need words to fill the space between smiles.
You’ve perfected the art of the gently bitten bottom lip,
while all I’ve got to offer is this goofy grin—
flashing a mouth full of teeth like typewriter keys,
craving to spell out in some brand new word,  
that I’ve never used and that you’ve never heard,
how wonderful you look today.

I bet you’ve left stronger men than me kissing sparks out of wall sockets;
craving something that shocks like your electricity,
but I’m just happy that your static touch has got my hair standing on end.
And even though I’ve never known the face of God,
You’ve given me belief in rebirth.
You make me feel funny and young:
Like Saturday morning cartoons.
Like midnight skinny dipping
And *** with socks on.

The truth is, you make me want to fall in love like it’s 1945.
I’ve been shipwrecked on war torn foreign banks.
Lullabied to sleep by the ratta-tat-tat of
machine gun harmonies and
the horseshoed hoof beats of in-sync cavalries,
and your portrait warming the breast pocket
of my jacket is the only thing reminding me
that there’s real music in a place called home.
And even though I’ve never been the gentleman
that the storybooks promised
when you were young,
someday I’ll wear a three-piece suit and learn the piano for you.

After three years digging in dirt,
weaving roots and planting seeds
in the most unnoticeable lingering looks.
thing I’ve learned it’s that gardeners
make the best lovers,
and together we’ve grown a grove out of un-regrettable mistakes,
midnight stairwells and
out-of-state license plates.
There are things about myself that were nameless until you
embroidered them a set of initials on the insides of my eyelids.
Now my rapid eye dreams read about the best parts of me –
and the long nights, they don’t idle so much
when I have something to be proud of.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been writing
Dialogue for languages that I don’t speak.
Transcribing twisted writings of de-aligning dialects.
I’ve torn everything out of context,
Inspected it against the light,
Held it there until it burned from over exposure,
Then stitched its singed edges back into a niche where
It never seemed to fit quite right,
But close enough to be
Misconstrued as almost coherent.
And this confusion became the format for my daily
Step-by-step instruction manual.
          Rip.
          Look.
          Burn.
    ­      Stitch.
          Repeat.
For a while I found comfort behind
The makeshift ideas pieced together
With television taglines and childhood nursery rhymes.
I could count the number of times
That I’ve been caught
Slipping in certain names
Of certain people and places
That I swore to forget
On paper-cut fingers wrapped in band-aids
Like they’re next springs new fashion,
And it’s a dismal ratio
When compared to how often I get away with it.
I get away with ******
And it’s funny
How easy it is to hide words within words.
And I fall further in line,
          Repeat.
          Rip.
          Look.
    ­      Burn.
          Stitch.
I fall further in rank-and-file,
          Repeat.
Yesterdays.
          Rip.
A­ bloodline.
          Look.
The same.
          Burn.
The smell of smoke.
          Stitch.
Through the eye of a needle.
          Repeat.
I begin to confuse tomorrows with yesterdays.
          Rip.
My fingertips can testify that paper and razors share a bloodline.
          Look.
I can’t see a change, I’ve rearranged every alphabet and they all seem the same.
          Burn.
I think I’ve grown accustomed to the smell of smoke.
          Stitch.
I stop denying that I’m fitting my whole lifeline through the eye of a needle.

As daylight shines bright through cracked blinds
I realize that, now,
Instead of counting subliminal messages
I’ve been keeping a tally of every time I blink
So that I’m aware of each moment I miss while
Hiding behind blackened eyelids,
And I am drowning in debt.
So I pull tight the drawstring on the window shades
And let my skin soak up the sun
I notice that where the mountains meet the sky
Seems so much brighter than it’s described in the words
That are now scattered across my floor.
But like exes,
Old habits have a tendency
To call you beckoning back
When you finally find breath again.
I found breath again,
But just as quickly staggered in reverse to
The familiar feeling of paper
And my hands do what they’ve been trained to.
          Repeat.
          Rip.
          Look.
      ­    Burn.
          Stitch.
But my eyes are fixed on the horizon,
They start setting with the sun.

          Repeat.
I begin…
          Rip.
My fingertips…
          Look.
I can’t…
          Burn.
I think…
          Stitch.
I stop.