I don't like the way this feels most days.
Can you believe I don't like such complexity?
Why is my affection never simple?
Never just one-sided; instead,
It's a moon with phases, with changes
Too unpredictable to pencil down.
It used to be spring tides or none at all
But I've been getting tamer ones lately.
If it does crash, it does so politely, lightly
Carressing my shore with waves of affection.

Sometimes I forget to worry.
Sometimes I forget how heavy-handed I can be,
How easily I can hurt, despite
The dulling of my edges;
And I do this for some people
My affection wants to keep.
I admit it's not the wisest thing I do.
The shackles hurt a lot more
When you jump too far,
Thinking you can make it.

Still, I wonder if that might be better.
I do not like my anxiety, but
I don't like being absentminded in this either.
I do not like not knowing, not holding
The reins of my affection, my hurricane affliction
I do not like the way this feels most days.
I do not like the thought of hurting you.
I do not like it when this moon is new
but I must say, I do like the way you want this, too.

She is a cigarette
She's a habit hard to break
though breaking it won't matter
because I can't stay away
She is a bad addiction
Relapse is my routine guest
Somehow I always succumb
I never get to rest
I lie at night, so anxious
That I'll see her again,
might lower my defenses
I'll ask to see her when
I'm ready and more stable
(like that was ever the problem)
I'll forget that she's my cancer
I'll Forget will be my anthem

I can tell you that I love her
But know, I'll be ashamed of it
She's that cigarette, half-lit
that you keep in your pocket
When your friends come along
and ask you how you're doing
You'll say you're fine
even though she's burning
through your pants and to your thighs!
But you'd choose burns over whatever
their worried mouths will say
It's all a blur, a cycle
Why does she have to stay?

Why does
she have to stay
if after a few puffs,
she'll only go away?

"oh sorry, i forgot" what? like your house keys on a busy day?
like your jacket on the warmer mornings,
only wanting me around when the night gets bitter cold?
"oh sorry, i forgot" that i was even around to begin with?

god my waterline's a ******* rim of that one red cup
i had to carry over to the other side of the bar,
maneuvering through a sea of people, all occupied
with thoughts and words and sloppy sentences,
breeze through, i try

don't ******* tip me over

isn't she lovely though,
when she's bent over like that,
hugging her knees,
hair a curtain torn apart over and over,
laid to rest on perfect skin?

what a ******* perfect storm.

please wake up and look at me again.

"What is your favorite despicably beautiful thing?"

Two answers: sadness and you.
Both comparable in more ways than one.
You are a million gallons of peppermint tea,
an avalanche of contaminated sunsets,
******* renditions of Gymnopédies.
Remember year 2009? I watched the moon with you.
You wanted to bathe in the half-priced rain shower
and I said sorry, I'm sorry, I'm really ******* sorry,
because I could do anything for you at that moment
but I didn't. I didn't.

The mind is not the heart--
Don't be fooled, my hideous darling gremlin of a self.
The mind. Is not. The. Heart.

And it never will be.

Pitter patter. I hear your calling in every rain drop.
I see your face in every expensive thing I can't afford:
that box of earl grey, those Japanese ******* tea cups--
But I can live with the loss of you.
I can live. I can live.
I am never alone anyway.

Oh, I’ve got guns for hands and I might’ve killed her out of passion.
Is it possible for skin-to-skin interaction to produce such electric friction,
enough to ignite these explosives awake?
Perhaps if you base it all on the violence,
the shattering, the sudden release of ethereal presence,
the full-blown eruption of all her emotions and everything in between–
Perhaps if you base it all on that, then you can cut my arms off of their sockets
and throw them out into the sea and I would be more than happy to oblige.
'Cause I’ve got guns for hands and I killed her out of passion and hers is my demise.

I love you.
Countless poems cannot cut it.
‘I love you, I’m sorry, thank you.’
Not enough, not enough.
Please write a eulogy for me.

He has worked so hard
to put a roof above our heads
but it’s raining knives
and I’m bleeding seas

Roof or no roof,
death has its keys

She’s waiting for a failure
that would turn her life around;
waiting for her lightbulb to burst
so she can buy another one;
waiting for her ink to dry
so she can use another pen;
waiting for her eyes to tire
so she can cry again

Until then, she’ll walk on, asleep,
waiting for someone–
waiting for the failure
that would wake her up
and push her out of bed

I’ve got a bunch of little stars sitting in my desk drawer.
I used to leave them under my bed, but they leave holes on my sheets.
I miss the warmth of it, but I’m also scared to disintegrate.
How you managed to catch them, I have no idea.

I don’t want to hear your story either–
not with your bandaged hand.

I don’t know what it is with one-word titles that just get to me.
They reach in through my paper skin, and the light cardboard ribs, without ripping anything in half or bending something beyond comprehension.’ I’ve always found it a little bit intriguing the way I come out alive after each song and each poem, each work of art that should have shredded me through and through but didn’t.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that you’ve killed me so many times but I keep coming back to you.

I never travel but I'm never home
The sky is always alive,
but it never talks to me
the way it does with other children

I'm never the same person;
I always change my skin
the way one would change out of his clothes
I never get to love myself
long enough for that

I never get it right enough,
always with a tinge of wrong
and I get so exhausted
but I never talk myself out of it

I never travel but I'm never home
A stranger my house knows too well

babies suckle and babies cry,
I was a baby born to die

From the moment I met her, I knew
she was more than the discreet wind she poses to be.
She was a storm brewing, sleeping it off
until the next rainy day arrives.

My skin tingles whenever she’s around
and my whole body screams,
“Run away! Run away!”
but I knew too well, I couldn’t be saved.

I was already in too deep,
caught up in the eye of the storm.
Steady for safety,
though loving her is never safe.

She rains on asphalt roads
and shoots electricity down people’s spines.
She kisses earthquakes awake
and she blows roofs off of hearts.
She breaks walls down with her breaths.
And she scares me.

My whole body screams
“Run away! Run away!”
but my mind is off wandering,
writing poems and manifestos
about apologetic winds and loving every storm—
and living through all that.

I used to drink a lot in the afternoons
when my breathing was both too shallow and too deep,
when the house was empty and my radio was breaking
and the song kept etching itself onto my skin,
when I’m alone and lonely and filled with ennui
and I’m nothing but broken strings
that pricked my love when she tried to strum me,
when I’m wishing for something
a little less than sleep but more than death
and I’m waiting for my blood
to be as hot as the brandy caressing my throat.

You sleep too much because you want to cry less
As if your bed could absorb the sadness from your skin
Despite waking up with tears tracing your cheeks
And frost sealing your bones regardless of your twenty quilts
You’re hopelessly naïve if you think sleep can save you,
Thaw you, end the winter swirling in the pit of your stomach
You are only making everything worse for yourself
You need to get up and start moving your gears
No matter how much it hurts, no matter how much it aches
Soon all the rust and frost will fall away and melt
And you can move again as much as you may wish
Dance to the beat of life itself,
Sing the songs you’ve buried inside you
You are not an old machine fathers try to fix but eventually give up on
You are human, you are alive and you are on your best when living

Is that really all I am?
A passing thought,
a memory,
preserved so well,
you needn’t seek any proof
that I am still around?
Do you not need me around?
Do you not want me at all?
When strings are being pulled taut
and you can barely even breathe—
When the night is all you feel and
your palms are cold and dry
and you say you need me alive—
Do you need me alive?
Or is the memory of me
enough
for
you?

I was named after my mother because she hoped
that I could fill the hole inside my father’s chest,
make him smile the way she used to,
and make him feel alive again,
after leaving him alone and fragile.

My mother loved my father enough to leave,
even when she didn’t want to–
especially when he asked her not to.

She said, she said,
“I’ll never be the song that heals and rouses you
from the sadness that has taken root
in the space between your lungs.
I can never be, I will never be the one.”

My father loved enough to keep her still
as he painted her image in his mind one last time
–loved enough to shake the thousand chips of paint,
dried up from years of waiting for her return.

But father knew, as the last wind blew
and tore the last traces of mother away,
that there was never a hole to fill,
just a hand to hold when it’s getting cold
and tiny fingers to clasp as life goes fast
towards the sweet, sweet exit lane.

Mother was always going to leave,
in every lifetime we would re-take and re-live,
but father was never going to be alone.

you're the sweater that got buried during hotter days
under textbooks and novels and journals,
under things i tried to **** your memory with
you're my oldest sweater, i never threw you out
come september, i will long for you again

I wonder why you're not used to me yet.
It's not like I ever really change, I merely evolve--get worse , like most catastrophes.
Remember that time you joked about comparing me and the Cold War?
That never really left my mind. Not that it tainted anything worth keeping clean.
I am a war. That's something you got right. But I am not a war against anyone else.
I am a war I wage against myself.
A weak tornado, a broken tsunami, a civil war of sorts that none will ever win.
No one will ever win. But I will always lose.
It is a fate I have come to accept in the past few years I've had to deal with broken bones and torn tendons.
None of these is really new.
I wonder why I'm not used to it yet.

"Burn bright," you said. "Burn bright, for you are a star
and that is your destiny--that is what you were born to do."
I remember when the sun set that one fateful day we spent in paradise--
barely paradise, actually, for the light and the colours only scared me off--
and you held my hand, exhaled as the orange turned to grape to blackberry blankets,
muttered something that sounded a bit like "It's always meant to be like this."

I breathed, I breathed, I breathed. And now, I do the same.

Maybe I'm not born to burn bright. Maybe I was born to burn out.

Breathe, breathe, breathe.
Hold my hand and breathe.

You are not an old man searching for meaning beyond the horizon he has been given
Life is not and will never be generous and while I know that you are grateful
for little things like feeling your dog breathing, living her innocent little life
like a sigh or a scoff or a tiny half-bark "mommy, I need you to pet me right now"

How are you and your invented disease?
I hope they love you now

there’s always this vast space between the two of us—
a sort of unrest, lying comfortably on the coffee table.
and we try to ignore as much as we could, don’t we
don’t we try to mask everything in steam and whipped cream?
we talk about intimacy—you even stretch your fingers,
try to close the g a p: one part, air; two parts, ambiguity—
you cover my fingers with your palm but i can’t feel anything
and it used to frustrate me so much, but what can i do?
you and i are nothing against the moment, no matter how
serene our faces—how steady our breaths
we cannot win a fight that isn’t
even if you cover my hands with yours,
we’ll always be separate entities
never going beyond existence.

such a waste.

His advice was to burn it all down
so I wouldn’t have anything to go back to.
I would have done as he said,
had I not been scared of fire as it is.
I was afraid the flames would catch up to me,
grab onto my foot and lick up my legs,
swallow me up along with everything else.
He doesn’t know what I did,
no idea about what I didn’t do.
He'd understand anyway,
he’s been gone for five years now.

Couldn’t I just bury everything under snow,
so I could dig it up when I’ve come back?
"The snow would melt and so would your resolve,
but fire will wake you up and strengthen you,
keep your feet alive and moving.”
Who wants stagnancy? Who wants this?
I certainly have grown tired of it
but I’m too afraid to trade it for the comfort that
familiar chilly winds, light drizzle,
warm sunsets, starry night skies,
the smell of books in my library,
could provide me with.
He has always been stronger than me.
I can’t imagine how he must be now.

I live alone in a house in the fields
that I want to leave so badly
but I couldn’t seem to go
because of the huge crater that could be found
some distance from my home.
I could feel his words haunting me,
each time I pass by the emptiness of his lot.
They were still calling us children
when we stood in front of his burning house,
so bright amongst the dark sky painted behind it.
I felt like we were foreground objects
in his masterpiece about ashes.
At fifteen years old, he had rid himself of a home.
He thought it to be a burden—that which others
have always considered a luxury and privilege.

I miss the way his eyes would tear up as he stared at me unblinking.

Five years ago, I asked for him to come by
but he never accepted my offer.
Five years ago, I didn’t ask for him to stay
because I knew he never could.
I knew from the way he held me
as he whispered his parting words:
"Say hi when you come across me on your journey."
But that was five long years ago.
I’ve painted my walls red and orange,
fierce but hopefully not too angry.
I’m not angry. I’m peaceful.

I lived alone in a house in the fields
that I wanted to leave so badly
and now I’m leaving it,
but I’m not burning it down.
I’m leaving craters on each road instead.

You're gritting planets between your teeth,
crushing stars beneath your feet,
stripping galaxies of light,
you blackhole goddess you.
Have you ever heard a human's beating heart?
How do you see art?
How do you see the little mediocre things
us mortals have crafted for you?
Oh, kiss the Earth--the tiny Earth--
the speck with which you've moulded
every bead of your eternal necklace!
Kiss my life, kiss my being,
kiss me 'til I bleed enough
to write morality in songs!

She's got her eyes on her hand holding somebody else's
and she's got tiny planets stuck on her tongue

She doesn't understand how nice his hands felt covering hers,
how it reminded her of cotton fields
Funny how he has cotton candy smiles to match everything else about him

He makes her want to shed her skin twenty times
until she's clean enough to touch

But he also makes her want to grab a syringe
and inject some insulin into her bloodstream—
The whole thought of him frightened her to catatonic
and she knew her diabetic heart cannot handle such sweetness

She wants so much to let go of his hand
but he would smile and he would laugh and he would be
heavenly
and she would hate herself for ruining this

So she watches on at her hand holding somebody else's
and grit her teeth to the tiny planets exploding in her mouth

Sporadic. This girl
tells me she's going to live til she's
a hundred and thirty-three.
"I'm going to see history unfold
before my very eyes until
it's flat and spread enough,
it can't hold any more secrets."
Sporadic. This girl
tells me she'll find out history's secrets,
like they were more comparable
to her misplaced magic markers
than to the equality we so craved.
And the funny thing is that
she actually, truly, honestly believes that she can—
The other funny thing is that
I think I'm starting to believe her
and now, I've decided I'm telling her—
and she's walking towards me,
bright eyes and smiling lips
replaced by bitter lines and hues.
She's walking towards me—Sporadic.
This girl tells me that she's sorry
because she just got a call from her doctor—
Sporadic. This girl tells me
that she won't live past twenty-three.

I don't know how snow would feel against my calloused palm
but I think I have an idea. Is it in any way to be compared
to the burning cold your metal bones exhale on me?
What is white winter? Falling leaves branding the earth's skin
with red glowing blisters, only to burst and reveal
smooth ice underneath? I've heard of the earth clotting with
greens and dandelions and lavenders. I've heard of how
the earth heals itself, but I've never even had a glimpse.
Is it in any way to be compared to lives and deaths
of creatures living inside a mechanical box?

You cry over the things
you deem insubstantial.
You break from gentle winds,
and you evaporate from electric heaters.
But that does not make you weak.
Stardust sting eyes because they touch beneath eyelids
in a way that supernovas can't.
Don't let it weigh you down,
but let it lift you up to the heavens
where you truly belong.
Let the tears leave with the pain,
and you'll come out strong.
Then you can reach the skies you own--
your home.

You were my favorite Sylvia Plath poem
Your words were contemporary,
oh, you were classic in your own way, dear
How I loved the way you tasted
as your poetic melody rolled off of my lips,
as your sighs and laughter filled my head like smoke
gathering together in a room where those stoner kids
from the other street would inhale the wafts of their
sweet, sweet chocolate
You were a poem sweeter than chocolate
and I don't think anyone ever really told you
Well, I'm telling you now
even though I can't quite recall how well
you mixed with me
I don't think I ever really paid attention to that--
I suppose I was too busy reading between your
short, firm words--lyrics, perhaps
though I don't quite remember any music
I don't quite remember much aside from all
these things that I have written
I don't want to ever forget you and that's why
I'm having all of these written
You may not be as clear to me as you were before
(back when I read you far too often for my sanity)
You were my habit, my addiction--but never my vice,
for you were my favorite Sylvia Plath poem
and though my vision and my mind are both failing me,
my memory still holds you dear and your words,
oh, they still ring true to my ears.

This is me, awake again.

My eyes stung from the last time I cried.
Salty tears on each of its sides.
My head throbbing from the past night,
Searching in vain for that familiar light.

Give me a reason, give me a pen.
Let me write alone in my den.

Let me write my struggle within.
Let it fill that small old pen.
Take your chance on my sins.
For this is me, awake again.

I don't think we're there yet, kids.
We haven't quite reached deep enough.
We haven't quite grazed the tallest stalagmite of the cave of their hearts,
and yet we act as though we've lived there all this time.
I merely listened, and the steam has worked my engine up,
and I created a monster that existed to be misunderstood.
An expression that has gone to ****.
And I apologize.
I apologize for not apologizing in the first place.
I apologize for not trying to make people understand.
I apologize for writing up a tragedy.
I apologize for writing off your right.
I apologize this all has gone to **** and
I apologize for I don't know how to fix it.
I apologize for being so ignorant
of all the throes of your little tongues.
You matter, too, just not to me, perhaps.
I apologize.
I'll go try to listen a little less and care a little more.

You ripped the wings off of her so suddenly that, ****, I didn't see it coming.
Well, to make it fair, I wasn't there. ****, that's so unbecoming
of you. Well, *******. How could you?

She used to soar into her dreams a lot—her dreams that featured you.
You and her, together—storming all the weather, and all the idioms I have wronged before.
I'll be frank, kid, I've always known it was so much much more.

I'm a cynical ******* but I know beauty when I see one, recognized hope—
as hopeful as her hope could get, despite all the steep, slippery slopes
that could have, should have pushed her off the edge, but didn't.

Because she believed in you.
She believed in wrapping oneself in soft flimsy shell, and waiting for it to harden
until it can finally protect you—metamorphosis was what she believed in.
Like the monarch butterfly, she believed in it all.
She believed in larvae and crawling for the emerald pupaic goal.

She believed you'll grow wings one day, for you're only just a kid
She kept waiting and waiting, won't let you open the lid
of her jar. She loved her jar but she loves you more.

You love her, too, I can tell. Don't tell me otherwise.
I'd be insulted, little kid. Oh, but wouldn't it feel nice
to disprove my accusations, Mr. J the Ripper?

For months, you pulled her wings apart ever so slowly
So slow, in fact, that I somehow hoped you would stop and proceed to sew it back
But you never did—no, you ripped her ******* wings off, bones fractured with loud cracks!

YOU RIPPED HER ******* WINGS OFF, YOU ******* WATERSAC.

I've only seen the horrid wound once and I can still smell the ichor from her back.
I must commend you though, since decency was something you lived not to lack.
I just wish you'd grown the wings she wished for you to have.
But that cocoon must have felt cozy, so you never really left.
I'd like to be polite now so beware of your first steps.

You'll see the flesh whose skin you tore enough to expose.
You'll see her face everywhere, in poems and in prose.

(Now, I must bring my poem to a close.)

And like the monarch butterfly, dear, she will remember—
not just one, but all of it: all the pain you caused her,
hurt you chose not to lift—dreams that used to hold her adrift
Young lad, she'll remember everything
I assure you: She will remember every. Single. Thing.

(I wish your heart the heaviest of anvils, your mouth the tightest of zippers, your limbs the strongest of chains. I wish you luck, lad. I sincerely do.)

I wish you loved me enough to know when I need to hear your voice, my anchor.
Because right now, I'm so close to exploding, so close to coming undone at the seams
And I need you, dear, I need your laughter to fill me up,
yes,  I'd dispose all my bones for it
I need your words to replace the blood in my veins with a novel only you could craft
yes, I need to read it everyday before and after I slumber
I need your thoughts to take mine out for a sweet dance under the moonlight
yes, I'd let them bathe in the lake as long as you wish
I need you, love, I need the silky thread of your voice to stitch my spine back up
yes... I'd let you sew them as loosely or as tightly as you want
Loose enough so you may still come back to fix it, tight enough so you may never return
I'm leaving you with all the choices; I just wish you loved me enough to see them
I wish you'd call and ask and talk and laugh and stay
I wish you loved me enough to stay
But you don't and you won't
And now I've exploded, gone completely undone at the seams,
and my heart is aching for you.

I always fall in love with the unachievable:
her, writing, freedom
And as if that isn't sad enough,
it is my own cowardice and
self-imposed self-*******-righteous
limitations
that hinder me from my luxuries

I wait too long for them
I trade words for numbers
I am a bad poem
with metaphors that exasperate
instead of enlighten

Eureka, I have figured myself out but I don't know what to do with it.

My wrist hurts but I don't want to ever stop writing
Baby, don't you understand, this is our story I am typing
Putting it to words could be the only way
for me to understand how we're still here today
I am astounded, don't you see,
that you're still here with me
and it scares me and frightens me, sending jolts to my femurs
but you touch me and you embrace the chill out of my spine
I reach out and I whisper: You're alive and so am I
but I don't really know what to make of any of this

I just know that I need to write it all down before it fades away.

If this were all a dream,  
I'd take a pill or two
to **** myself anew,
Submerge in a lake
To drown myself awake,
Plunge in me a knife
To stab myself to life
Oh, wouldn't that be grand
to just leave this land?
To fly as the wind blew?
Oh, such a dream come true.

My breath is still coated by
the scent of the coffee I
carried in a paper cup
she had me bring along

The calm of the woods beckoned
to me, and I reckon
perhaps, at times, this solitude,
earth-evaporating as it was,
was enough
perhaps, at times, these hands,
chilly in its gloves as it was,
were better off rough
against the patterns of
the sequoia’s bark,
coarse as the soles
on my feet

Perhaps, at times, this sky,
dark and glittery as it was,
spread before me
oh-so-vastly,
would wrap me—
and me alone—
in its warm nostalgia,
and that, perhaps,
would be
enough.

Everything's fine, Ma
I'm just feeling a bit tired.
It doesn't make a difference though,
you know I'm wired
to committing myself to crossing fires
to driving with my skidding tires
I know I'm tired and my knots are stretched
but our dreams are still too farfetched
NO, MA I WILL NOT REST
Everything is but a test, but, Ma,
Dearest Ma, you are worth the air in my chest

The skies will cry if you will them so
I want sunshine for my tombstone.