hello like a cup of strong coffee at 6 am.
hello like rain, that isn't really rain, but more-so, a dusting of droplets that only really wet my eyelashes.
hello like the yellowing bends of denim and every last loose thread on my father's hand-me-down jacket.
hello like getting drunk and taking all of my body piercings out.
like waking up the next morning and re-piercing them myself.
hello like poking through.
hello like blood.
hello like oxidization and my favorite brand of adoration, that one that turns to grit and rust on my tongue.
hello like, "yes i am ready for things to get better now".
hello like, "i have no idea how to contribute to things getting better now".
hello like learning the words to my favorite songs again.
hello like learning how to write poetry again.
doing it badly.
not really caring.
hello like this time, no one will say goodbye until i **** well say it's time to leave.
this is the year i cease being a revolving door for half-hearted apologies,
they taste like old chewing gum, these ghostly heart-beaten impressions i've collected.
from now on,
bring me something beating,
bring me something warm,
bring me something red.
bring me your hello.

we are angels
with cathedrals,
prophets, and poems
to prove it  

other species  
are not endowed
with such gifts:

the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel
the pyramids, loosing
the bounds of earth
to walk on a moon...
psychoanalysis
the atomic bomb
Anthrax, dioxin
and gunfire
gunfire  

we are maggots
on rotting fruit, sated now
looking for a place to hop off,
to escape before the fruit falls fast  
to the ground

before the oceans rise
and the skies fill with ash
surely we can fly away

but we are wingless
angels, killer angels  
killer angels

My demons convinced me
We'd grow happy and old together
There's still time and hope
But you're already so happy
And I think my demons
**** at telling fortunes

Tree, I have come to shelter and with the rain to weep
I am soaked, barefoot with mud running through.
Soft the moss, cool and cold
to soothe my heart that bleeds.
Our waxing nights of love and moons
now fallow, a field that burns.
****** our hollow bed
of haunting, silent screams
too soon the fiery devil
too far my lover
the spring.

if we were to assign emotions to colors -
passion would be where magenta and orange kiss the horizon at sunset,
joy would be the yellow of my socks every easter sunday that i can remember,
and melancholy would be just another shade of blue.

i told him,
i am not done with you yet.
three weeks post breakup,
we shouldn't feel as unfinished as we do.
like, in the ridiculously complicated narrative of he and i,
the author got up one day,
scribbled a quick ending,
and then set the novel on fire.

i read an article in an obscure magazine
about Shelley Jackson,
an artist
who got thousands of people
to tattoo a singular word
from a story onto themselves,
and then sent them back to their scattered existences.

maybe that is what this is,
another scattered story.
another vaporized narrative.

i can feel it in the air,
but not pull the phrases together.
it's like trying to hold onto smoke.
our story slips through my fingers and gets in my eyes.

if we were to assign emotions to colors -
my ribcage would look like a Jackson *******.
my head would be a paintball arena.

i am so full of indigos,
and mustards,
and crimsons,
that Van Gogh, himself, would dip into my palette
and claim to have never seen such beautiful sadness before.

i don't know if it hurts because it still matters,
or if it matters that it still hurts.

i feel the frenzied ache of creation in my gut.
i am not a painter,
but my mirror is showing me
the immaculate collection of brushstrokes
i have become.

a few weeks ago,
i was approached by an artist who offered to paint my bruises.
to collect my contusions with watercolors.

what a beautiful intention,
to immortalize the growing pains,
memorialize the bumps along the way,
to make something permanent
of these perpetual transitions.

if we were to assign emotions to colors -
my pride would be gold-plated and rusting from use, like my grandfather's watch,
courage would be the pure green of every bud that has dared to grow through concrete,
and love?
love would be prismatic,
like spilled oil on asphalt.

a rainbow one moment,
vanished the next.

(i think that) it is poetic injustice -
that (to be fruitful) seeds fall away from their kin, (children),
(are) carried away in the guts of fauna,
(rooted in) soil far from (their parentage)
and told, "grow".