Who knew that getting a Starbucks gift card would turn out so harmful and mean.
When pleasant, harmless, innocent me fell for the spell of treacherous caffeine.

Like a hype with a spike
doing harm to his arm
I  was hooked.
Leaped before I looked,
goose was cooked.

Now I'm here to play the blame game.
Innocent me, walking in free, joyfully,
just getting a coffee.
Then wham!
or should I say bam!
It hit me.
I walked out a quivering, craving, slobbering creature...
maybe not literally but like I said it was done treacherously, maliciously, instantaneously, I was a caffeine *****!

So here are some of the reasons why I'm  unhappy with Starbucks:
--- Starbucks caffeine influenced my body by elevating my heart rate (I'm not sure why I expected anything different).
--- Starbucks crafty, subtley and slyly habitualized me ( Oh god, I'm  a creature of habit!)
--- Starbucks (If possible) is too friendly
--- Starbucks manipulated my accommodating nature (I just wanted to be friends, but now they feel more like, dare I  say it... family).
--- Starbucks slandered me ( by assuming I'm lazy. "Sit, relax, make yourself at home, stay as long as you like").
--- Starbucks  exposed my weaknesses ( l feel naked to coffees influence).
--- Starbucks made coffee hip and cool (I'm  going to go ahead and count that as a bad thing).
--- Starbucks crippled my will power (my will power walks with a limp now).
--- Starbucks  blew up the sun!  
--- And the final reason I'm  unhappy with Starbucks...because they're probably going to sue my *** for writing this!

Our temporal lobes have neurons whose sole purpose
Is to recognize faces
You see, humans are meant to be connected
Our bodies should vibrate
From the sounds of emotional resonance
We are meant to be seen,
Really seen, delving deeply into streams of running water
Where our vulnerability makes love with our experience
And this need is so great, that day after day, year after year,
We open our mouths with hope
That our words can share a meaning with someone
But mostly, we are left colliding
Or surviving near misses
Driving through relationship guardrails
Over the edge into desperation  
We are left holed up in separate hospital beds  
Isolated by IV drips of disappointment
Until we tell ourselves that true happiness is a myth
And the word “soulmate” was intended for everyone else
This used to be me
And it used to be you

When I awoke this morning
Remnants of our laughter were singing on your pillow  
There are 86 lashes on your right, upper eye lid
I can almost see them listening to me
Conduits for comprehension
As I speak,
You turn your ear so it can graze my lips
I whisper while I stare at your profile
Blinking, gentle smile lines
And my heart lunges toward yours like a magnet
I have crawled inside your pupils
To be covered with wet, black paint shining
From your spirit outward
Opposite of indifferent
Our faces so close that I can taste you breathing
This strange sensation is the absence of fear
I. See. You.
I have always known you
I can pull the IV out of my arm
Because what keeps me alive,
Is that you know me too

There is something you will come to realise.
Somewhere between regularly scheduled doctor checkups.
Between first credit cards and first credit card debt.
Somewhere around the second or maybe third serious ex.
Some time after the pipe and several dreams.
Long after all those half-cocked convictions
Declaring who and what and how exactly you will be.
A tad older and only slightly wiser.
Always late to funerals and early at parties.
You are a recovering introvert and you'll relapse, often.
You will always try to be ten degrees from the center of attention.
In fact, your want to be needed often supersedes your senses.
You love often, recklessly, but also selflessly.
Do nearly anything for a smile.
You will sometimes be too quick to anger.
Yet someone's tears will always make you soften.
At times, hurt others with a carelessly uttered half thought.
Balanced well by your excessive apologetic nature
and your undying compulsion to be liked.
You will learn the weight of giving your word
and the cost of failing to keep it too.
You will meet friends that feel like family.
And have times when family feels foreign.
But soon understand either is exactly worth
However much you are willing to invest.
Know that you will still have demons hiding around town.
In the end, we must slay our own monsters.
Be our own heroes.
Because ourselves are the only true thing.
We might be this for eternity
or maybe just this sliver.
All the more reason to try.
People improve in shades and moments.
It's a world of entropy and decay.
It's also a world of birth and hope.
A struggle sure, but one towards improvement.
Always try to be a better self than you are.
Because you are all you have.
Take care. It will be ok.

i had words on my tongue and they were pretty enough to be let off their leash
but **** it, i have no energy for beauty and delicacy and heartbreak wrapped in gilded paper
i have hurt, though, and she's scratching at the roof of my mouth
hoping that her claws can be her deliverance
deliver us from evil...
...and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us
the lord's prayer is on repeat, a broken record in my head
what goes around comes around,
except i keep getting ******* on
but i put my heart out and give love and hope it'll come back for me
i forgive
but don't get me wrong: i do not forget
every wrong done against me has burrowed down in my mind
hibernating and waiting for winter to end
so they can come out with a fury
i forgive-but-don't-forget every time i was kissed and made to feel special,
then left aside waiting like laundry that's clean but not yet folded
but all the hurt
the dried up sadness caked and cracked like an old mud puddle
the wiped away tears only my shower walls have seen
the thudding breaking
sticks on my desk, a reminder,
that even if things are bad
i am not.
i give kisses and receive receding backs, because
...deliver us from evil...
the tables will turn soon
they always do
and i'm willing to wait for it

i want to drink myself into a place no one can reach me
i want the room to spin so i can sit still and feel the world moving and cracking and tectonic plates shifting beneath my feet
i want to dance to music i don't like when i'm sober
i want to feel as beautiful as i feel when i'm drunk every day
i want to drink until all i am left with is empty cups and happy hiccups and i want to call my exes and tell them how lucky they were to have me and how bad timing was never a good excuse
i want to wrap a telephone cord around my fingers and then my body and i want to feel electricity in my hands and i want the world to spin because i tell it to

When will you return
Oh, explorer of grief and melancholy
When will you return from your trip
In the depths of despair
When will life finally release its deathly grip around you
So that you may smile that familiar smile of yours
So I may finally see the smile I live to see

No matter when you come
No matter how you return
Or in how many pieces
I'll be waiting
I'll be waiting to see your beautiful  self again
I'll be waiting to sink in the glimmer of your glares
No matter how dim it has become
I'll be waiting to indulge in the sweetness of your embrace
No matter how much life might have bittered its taste
To feel the touch of your palm
And any cuts life has left behind

And I'll be waiting to nurse back to health
To lighten your cosmic glares again
To sweeten the taste of your kisses
To wash away the dirt withing your cuts
To make you smile again

And even if you don't need me to heal
I'll be by your side
Smiling with you

I'll be here
I'll always be here

in your eyes
the sky is twice as deep
and on your lips,
the sun, its hottest yet

•<>•
the addicted pleasure words granted to we privileged few,
like every enslaved soul to the mind, which I am, I am,
evening dreams, midnight thinkings, sunrise seeings,
how can I infect and thus protect the young to the liberty
to love the crafted content of our human essence to better
comprehend that a moment caught on tape of our shared
words is a holiday, a celebration for the ages,
scar of pleasure, a forehead Cain mark, scarlet letter of pride,
for this reliving of our stories retelling is the skipped beat
of our connection not born from practical reason,
but from truths we own equally and though reason says
mine, it is not, it is only to be yours when the sharing
resonates resonates resonates resonates resonates
and every molecule, becomes a human tuning fork
in concert, in pitch identical, in blood tainted with
the simplicity of we are all the same, only words, this will transmit

                                          July 4th, 2017
                                                •<>•

"If you spend enough time reading or writing, you find a voice, but you also find certain tastes. You find certain writers who when they write, it makes your own brain voice like a tuning fork, and you just resonate with them. And when that happens, reading those writers … becomes a source of unbelievable joy. It’s like eating candy for the soul."
And I sometimes have a hard time understanding how people who don’t have that in their lives make it through the day.
David Foster Wallace

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine

the angel on my shoulder
picked up smoking,
the devil on the other
took up yoga—

they don't know
how much they have
in common.