it is 2009 again
we sneak around like creatures
beneath the shadows of the world.
and all it's hate and disappointment
through all the clouds that rain upon me,
you are the sunshine breaking out onto the street.

i collect each ray, a purest gold
a precious currency you've yet to know.
trade in my deepest darkest moments
for some closure
you are the end of what i thought was starting over.

you pick me up and hold me tight
like nothing you have ever held before
i am like nothing you have ever felt before
you are the first and last thing i'd like to remember loving.

with a heart that pretends to have never broken,
because you piece me back together
with nuts and bolts and weld to me your naïveté
i am are your new and hidden sin,
you are the angel that i caught by accident.

you are the hoping and the longing
and the rips across my sneakers
and my jeans
and i glow again in confidence
because you still believe in beauty
and in mine, particularly.

yours are the widest, vastest eyes i've ever drowned within
you are like candy and like sea salt
and like laundry
and i lift up every layer of time
to bury you and keep you warm inside.

you heal the hurt i used to long for,
you are the memory i'm made for
weaving dreams into a calmer, clearer head
of love before it learned that love was dead.

there is no place for me to hide,
if i were to tuck myself inside
the marrow deep within your bones,
you'd break each one to get to me.
and **** it dry, the whole supply.
you'd exhaust your every resource
in my pursuit.

i have become your madman shackled,
the prey your hungry eyes have tackled.
you are a flower ever blooming,
looming, growing towards me.
wide-eyed on the chase,
i am the most alluring poison
you did ever taste.

for me, your stomach's aching,
and hands are coarsely shaking
the demons you are waking
are taking every toll on me.
til i am gone, and you are weak
you'll seek my nectar, ever sweet.
no matter what the price will be.

if it does not bring you peace,
if it does not make you happy,
if it does not help you grow,
let it go.

12 am eastern time,
these sheets of mine have long soaked up your scent
the A/C vent recycles old summer dust
and Nautica Blue
and you.

it’s feeling colder.
                                        outside
my window.
          inside
these              sheets.

The steam of the fever dream
we      w      a       e
                e       v      d
together is
           s e t t l i n g
on the rug like morning dew.

It’s heavy air gets
    stuck
   inside
     m y
   throat
each time i try to
swallow back a memory.

But still I
              r i  s e
        . l i k e  t h e .
sun, brighter every day.


Making way for oceans
                            ~~~~~~
                       ­     ~~~~~~~~
                           ~~~~~~~~~~
where there once were
                                         deserts
between my arms,
my lips, my legs.

Brushing into piles:

          the sand
        you dragged
    in with your boots,                  the
                                     ­              dried up
        the                                  flower petals,
  parts of me
you left behind.
    

like    *****   laundry.
    inside my room.
    inside my heart.

i am filled to the brim with life.
forgive me if your shaking makes me spill.

i thought about you papa,
while i was flying last week,
miles above the ground.
and i imagined that while up there,
i was somehow closer to you,
to a heaven that i don't even believe in.
that somehow the plane was holding me up,
the way a person holds up a cellphone
in order to get better reception.
and so we were closer up there.
and you could hear my silent cries to you,
my thoughts soaked in red wine,
my eyes fixed out the window, at the clouds
my memories of you, jagged at the edges,
fragmented by time
and the worries that filled the days just before you died.
and so on that flight, on that day in mid-july,
i missed you, in a way that seemed to bring no pain.
it was the way you miss the summer in december,
because if you think hard enough about it,
you can still feel kind of warm.

i love you.
for what it is you love to do
when nobody is watching.
because i can not watch you do it,
i know not what you do.
but i'm sure i'd love to do it,
i'm sure i'd love it too.

all of the things we see that make us smile--
why can't we just see more of that?

why can't we just see only that?

i can not believe in a life without you.
it goes against my whole religion,
which says that above all is love
and that nature holds all secrets of the universe
-so that when every star above my head
somehow matches the gleams of your eyes,
or the curve of your lips remind me
of the oceans ever-stirring waves.
or when the wind that catches my hair
does so to the rhythm of your rising,
falling chest with every breath-
i will not take for granted
the small and subtle ways that i can find you
in the world's most simple, natural places.
this is not a love that was made,
but rather found,
as the diamond is uprooted from her earth.
you are the most precious stone
i'll ever get to hold.

if i could measure myself by your terms,
i would become that feeble pile of gray dust
you sweep under your rug,
or blow off of the dashboard of your shiny blue car.
i could be that lonely scuff mark on your shiny white shoes,
new and barely broken in.
new and barely broken in, like that heart
perfectly beating in your perfectly toned chest.
when did it become so easy
to trim my value into useless puzzle pieces
trying tirelessly but aimlessly
to fit into those tiny awkward spaces we create.
i spent the last few years of my life,
attempting to escape comfort, fearful
of it's promise--like loathing the end of the night,
i have run fast into the moonlight,
hid beneath my covers, shaking, screaming
JUST ONE MORE HOUR.
it can not be over.
you can not be leaving me now,
can you?
while i am swelling up with tears,
and need to be felt, so deeply now
beneath your skin? i pick and scratch
at your freckles, but you are cute and made
of wrought-iron dimpled blonde steel,
and i, too weak, too worthless,
too useless, to bend you into
pretty loving shapes.

how can i fear the end now, that is it finally
seemingly eternally here. where do we go
now? how can i rest, abandoned, leaking
words, dripping
thoughts into a bucket that,
at any moment
can
spill.
this is goodbye.

convinced that i am wise, i wire
and rewire
and revise and revise
and just leave it
blank.
a blank is nice & empty.

and empty
is what i now disguise as comfort.
the more silence that i settle in,
the more places there are for us to hide.

convinced that i am sane, i train
and retrain
and retain and re-tame
my mind to ask for every thought served on ice,
because frozen is comfort, too.

it is solid
and it can be held and drawn,
and re-drawn
it can be sharp
and be the means by which i sever
any speech i string together.

because for now just words will do,
any words you like untrue,
will fit into this empty,
i’ve stretched to welcome you.

will you fight with me
for simpler days--
late night skate, &
call-wait
-ing up to hear a
slurry word and sunsets
over skylines
overthinking,
sinking stomachs
through the bathroom floor,
one more
love note left inside your pocket
rips across your sneakers
and your jeans
on our knees under a streetlight,
stealing time from goodnight,
glowing in the grown-out kind of
confidence
i left in 17
when you still believed in beauty
and in mine, particularly.

i love you the same way honey drips
oh so slowly
But sweetly
and deliberately
from the buzzing hive

i stopped writing about love and all the people
that begged for rations of my lips and eyes
i've left the pages white and neat and empty
i've kept the plastic wrap around my mind.

i stopped trying to feel something worth describing
with rhythm and with simile and rhyme.
i am collected in this box of bones and sutures
i am impossible to love past dinner time.

i stopped shaking from my heavy, dreamless sleeping,
the timing belt to which my feet are strapped.
i am locked into a ground that can't broken,
guarding mines of love like gold that can't be tapped.

i stopped writing about depth and loss and body
i packed and froze my stock of butterflies
i've kept in cages all the wild phrases
that once wandered like balloons into the skies.

i stopped turning all the pages of the scripture
i pray only after two glasses of wine
i dug until i found the clay of chaos
then stabbed my shovel dully in its spine.

i stopped writing about love and all it's meanings
i am suspended on a rope above my heart
cracking slowly under weight of empty spaces
why fall in love when you can fall apart?

I am growing, sometimes painfully.
Sometimes out of molds i spent years shaping,
Sometimes, cautiously, into new ones.
I am still wearing all of my truths in layers,
deciding which ones grip my curves best,
and which ones ought instead, to be shed.

In spite of all the weights I chose to carry,
and all the dark holes I almost made home,
I am still climbing.
Towards the freest, lightest version of myself,
I am still growing.

And so should all of us.

In the face of everything and everyone that strives to shrink you,
choose to grow.
Even when it feels like being torn from the inside out,
Even when it breaks your heart,
Even when it means loss, and change, and chaos,
choose, still, to grow.

Even if growing means standing still,
Even if right here, right now feels comfortable,
bask in that comfort, be grateful for the relief it offered you,
but rise with the sun, with the 360,000 new babies
born each day into a new shot at life,
pack up the things you've learned to keep, and go.
In whatever small or large way you can manage,
grow.

Even if it is in ways invisible to others,
even if it is a rate so slow it feels like going backwards,
when the timing is just right, youll know.

Because all of the great big forests on Earth
were formed one patient seed at a time,
because that time is a gift whose value
we often dont understand until it is laid
to rest with us at death,
because life alone is a miracle,
every day you are alive, you should be growing.

Because you owe it to the breath that makes you willing,
to the trees that keep the lungs inside you filling,
to the home the land on which you stand provided,
when youve decided to avoid the pain of living,
and instead, you slow
do so with intent not to let go.
With every ounce of strength you know, just grow.

even after the harshest, coldest winters,
the spring still finds the strength
to revive all of the flowers of the earth.
the planet spins around again.

and that's the way that i intend to love--
with the resilient yet forgiving force of nature.
because it is the universal purpose.
because the movement of our lives simply depends on it.

They never taught us what a smile
was worth
so I’ve been scrounging all of the earth
to get a glimpse of yours I’m sure
one world’s still not enough
so I’ll get big and I’ll get tough
and bring to you the galaxy you’re after.                                    —-anything
to soak within your laughter.

the earth will not ask for attention.
but rumble in a mighty silence,
move an eternity
of clouds and waves to action.
make assembly lines of atoms,
trembling in their subservient shells,
then bathe in the disorder.

she will not offer mercy.
but bring life desperately to it’s knees, wring it meticulously
of all its borrowed magic.
and with her bare and calloused hands, spread her prize
like blood and honey across the skies, burning brightly in the glorious colors.

the earth will not forgo her spinning.
but drag every root or claw
that clings to her
through an infinity of dust and frost. skirting dutifully along the sun’s rays, bound to a thin and treacherous tight rope, gripped like a razor blade
wedged into her fist.
spilling precious drops of matter,
live and dead, like a trail of wet paint across the universe,
dancing delightedly in deference
to her imminent destruction.

you knew that i loved flowers,
gave them to me
the same way you did promises:
in pretty, dying bouquets.

a dozen “we’ll be okay”s
   someday
i’d get that quiet house
where I can lay my weary bones.
and you can lay another lady
every time that I’m not home.

trimmed the stems down,
avoiding each thorn
touching only the parts of me
that were soft and green
like money.
“relax. It comes and goes”
and so did you, through any
willing woman’s clothes.

in shiny vases:
“anything I could afford,
anything for you”
any thing that you could get inside
because anything is more.
and so I got my pretty flower petals
covering the floor
in a trail that led me to the bed,
the only way you knew.
always got my pretty flowers,
instead of any truth.

i used to have a garden green.
and planted in its soil a seed.
i watched it grow and wrap around
everything sprouting from that ground,
until my garden did become
a sea of plants succumbed to one.

and thicker still the vine did grow.
i reaped beyond what i could sow.
but when the thing one day decayed,
my work in rotten petals layed,
upon the dirt, who swallowed them whole.
my love a mountain, now a knoll.

i poured your pretty lies
like purple skies
into the sinking sun.

the ugly that you told me
sounds of beauty surely
to someone.

when the day is through,

and you take off the mask that you have chosen to wear to the world.

tell me:
are you willing to lay to rest with your soul?

One day,
unexpectedly,
unprepared,
you will rediscover
the part of my soul
that you took away from me
and that you hid,
and you forgot about.

Somewhere strange,
like in between your couch cushions,
or tucked inside the pocket of an old hoodie,
you will find it.

And you'll hide it away quickly,
hold it tight in your palm, behind your back.
And she will kiss you.
And you will think for just one second, that it was me.

A lot of people feel
             like the future—
like perfect, painless,
new beginnings.
And picket-fencey promise.

But you. You
             Feel like 17.
and stomach pains and poetry.
like the first time. and
not knowing yet
that this all ends.

stop assuming that i want to be a hero.
i want nothing of burning buildings
or gold ribbons.

i don’t want more—
your more is not the kind i need.
reward me, instead, with less.

when you forget me,
forget me to my face.
come see, with me,
how harrowing humanity can be.

spare me please of the plucking,
gleaning over by money-stuffed palms,
greased-up with thorn-drawn blood:
a short bill to pay
when building bouquets.

share with me please,
the price you’ve prescribed
for bottom shelf brand human being.
what else do I owe?
what must I lose to live?

or,
if it’s easier,
to die? — the way i wish:
a ****,
tucked in the crack of old cement,
unseen by all but sun and rain.
safe and cheap, or free.

or free.
or free to be, left in my invisibility.

the things i don't understand yet about life
and what it is that makes us move
and makes us meet
and why it is that we love
and also why we fall apart...

these are the sweetest uncertainties
--to never truly know what will become of us
is magic.

it is what makes us come alive
day after day
when the rest of life's familiarities
prefer us dead.

like the flap of butterfly wings,
and softer, smaller, thinner things.
golden shimmer blackened rings,
the tips of your limbs fluttering,
landed weightlessly on my skin.

tickling to my bone glowing hot,
you whispered in my ear, the *****,
hairs at end by winds collapse,
revealing secrets, treasure maps,
weak rubberband encircling snaps.

the spot was marked by sweat to graze
the endless fields of goosebumps raise
an image of a butterfly, it plays,
and whisked into my range of hair.

when i can smell the sound it makes,
and feel its taste in stomach aches.
the butterfly of the body shakes.
into its home, my heart, it takes.
and wraps in black my golden shimmer veins.

your breath the breeze that brought the butterfly's
wings to form to speckles of your eyes.
and lashes batting winked into the skies,
and kissing cheeks and spaces between thighs,
to make goosebump mountains to scale.


when you feel the flap of butterfly wings,
in your bones valley, in blood springs,
into your ear a hush, whisper, the insect sings,
and pulls you in by golden harp strings,
wrapped in black in ropes and rings.
a melody in passion, it begins.

she is both blissful and unbearable.
she spreads her prettiest
and ugliest sides like cards within a deck:
and plays them simultaneously.

she walks with a heavy
and stubborn independence,
crowned by a perpetual quest for reassurance that when life’s sweetest lemons are handed to her,
she won’t have to taste them alone.

she questions everything.
it does not mean she won’t believe.
she puts herself on a pedestal
she usually doesn’t deserve
and from which she falls often.

she meets any threat to her values,
no matter how twisted and illogical they are, with due resistance.
she admits she is often still wrong.

but offer her the challenge of acceptance—lay your weapons down next to hers—
and she will live to show you,
over and over,
better than you ever saw coming.

you were like a loud television in the next room,
disturbing my sleep night after night,
but i was always too tired
to just get up and shut you off.

i tried my best to piece together what i heard--
the dialogue was intriguing, at times beautiful.
but still there was the wall...
and from my side of it,
i could not see you for what you really were.
until one day, i did.

and i know now to never again settle
for an image incomplete of description,
a story short of resolution,
or for losing sleep--for eyes so tired, so heavy
they made the baggage you put on me seem light.

never again will i paint pretty pictures in my head
for a love that is so clearly artificial,
it exhausts my wonder for the truth.

exhausts it so covertly,
and with such careful manipulation,
that i mistake my weariness for weakness.
when all the dreams i lost,
all the dreams you stole, were of my strengths.

one day i'd like to love somebody
the way i love a poem.

the way it seems to curve itself around
its own edges, with calculated precision, and jump
from line
to line
like
marbles
falling in a pin-ball machine.

the way it seems to stand up for itself,
self-construct and de-construct the space
in which it floats,
like the clouds that hug the air around the ocean.

the way it leads a wish, like a dandelion seed, into the world
gently and blindly.
and bears on itself the weight
of so many
human
sorrows
yet rises from the ground a flower.

the way it's purpose sits like a ribbon
on a christmas present,
beautiful both open
and contained.

i'd like to send you something,
to your house, if you permit.
it might be something small,
and light enough to fit

inside a standard business envelope,
so i may drop it down the *****,
of the mailbox on my street
avoid the lines at UPS,

all the clutter and the mess,
yes, i think it would be best
if it required just one minute and one stamp
to leave this something for you down the ramp.

if you allow, then i shall wait
check and recheck the current date,
meticulously calculate
the hours til it reaches you.

i'll pray that it arrives intact,
but please forgive me if in fact
you find it's perfect edges cracked
by the shipping and the handling.

or should the weather of the spring
sustain, and should this unforgiving rain
leave drops like kisses in the paper threads
or should the ink have bled,

accept, i beg, my small imperfect gift
allow your gentle hands to sift
through stacks of correspondences,
allow me please, to the suspense

of sending you, by mail a part
of a handled, weather-beaten heart.

you know that feeling you get when you wake up
right before the alarm clock goes off?
that is us.

we are as carefully constructed as sand castles...

always one grain away from the hour.
just one inch too short of making the rollercoaster,
and tippy-toes now just won't cut it.

we are a missed flight.
i ran my fastest, carrying along our bags, bulky and heavy.

my palms keep getting blistered,
and i know for sure its not the monkey bars
or that baseball bat,
i kept swinging.
one homerun for every hundred fouls.

we are one mile short of the marathon.
a violin strung too tight to symphonize.
a micrometer short of the ratio--the golden
green of nature. but Frost knows best
that nothing gold can stay.

we are the silver medal,
and never could i settle for second best.

we are tired, weighted eyes
longing for closure,
and peaceful slumber.
but our lids are taped wide open
and we have stared too deeply,
too certainly and stubbornly,
into the past that
like an orphan on his birthday,
there never came a present.

we are that feeling.

we are the breaking point,
that moment right before you lean in
for a kiss you'll never get to steal.

the longing after lightning
for the thunder,
only ever finding silence.

and no law of physics can explain
this hole now.

we are a dead and ancient language,
a star that burned out just one century too early
to ever shoot into a wish.
a wave lost in the ocean,
a tree fallen in a forest so vast,
so pure, so untouched,
it didn't even deserve to make a sound.

we are two figments of one imagination.
a dream we are both too afraid to wake up from,
a grip so tight that everything just slipped...

...away into the wind that caught
your hair
and mine
and the wing of a seagull,
soaring steady above the coast
into a sunrise
we will never arrive in time to catch.

i feel you as a time of day.
you are the turn of the clock,
the passing of the clouds above my head,
the face on the moon,
the song that lulls me to sleep,
the little bit of grace in my step,
the feeling of a full stomach.

you are my home run, my A+,
my favorite food.
i feel you in all of those moments of bliss.
and in the moments of worry or doubt,
you are the feeling that can bring me back to life.
my rescue team.

i feel you as my favorite weather,
my favorite bundled up hoodie,
the opportunity for me to catch a leaf
as it falls from the tree to make my wish,
the blowing out of birthday candles.

you are the spin of the earth.
the pull of the tides in my lungs,
my breathing, heart's rhythm.
the banging of a drum,
i feel you as a perfect melody,
a symphony,
a masterpiece.
a poem.
of skin and bones and beauty.

you are the moment when class lets out early.
the bus coming on time.
the taste of a cold beer,
the funniest scene of the movie
(that we both know we'll ever see in its entirety).

i feel you in every moment that is slightly better than the last.
i feel you in the spinning of the wheels of a bike, or a car, or an ambulance.
the glow of the moon. the curve of my clavicle.
i feel you in the cycle of a dream. my REM sleep.

i feel you like a faith i never lost,
a whirlwind that circles my body
and tingles me like pins and needles.
i feel you in every way that has ever been defined human,
and in ways i'd like to believe divine.
i feel you inside and outside.
the striving to get better. the will to never give up.
the most beautiful things in life
are made even more beautiful because of you.