loving you was kind of like oversleeping.
quiet and so, so loud
when i opened up my eyes.
i spend all my time running late,
shaking the daydreams out of my head.
something about you
reminded me of all times i just wanted to sleep the year away,
wake up next september and have everything be okay,
and how glad i was i stayed awake for july,
a few months past my bedtime.
it’s the line running on repeat in the cracks of my brain,
there’s a symphony in here playing, it’ll never be the same.
looks like the conductor called in sick,
so it’s like some ill-conceived medley
of tchaikovsky and biggie
and if you don’t know now you know
to the backing music to the nutcracker.
every book i’ve read and every movie i’ve ever fell asleep to
are so tangled up that i can’t make out the lines
i actually wrote underneath them.
what i’m trying to say is that it’s all cymbal crashes in here
and i’ve run out of metaphors, i fear  
that i can’t seem to say anything at all right now,
i am writer’s block at 3 o’clock
and the afternoon has no right to feel 2 AM like this.
i used to think loneliness only happened
when it was the middle of night and i was wondering why
i couldn’t seem to take up all the space in a twin bed on my own,
or when i was in the middle of crowd
and i kept catching myself searching for someone who just... isn’t there.
and this poem has been in process
in the back of my head for a long time,
for about as long as i’ve known you.
i keep adding lines and crossing them back out,  
i keep opening my mouth and sewing it back shut.
you see, it’s very… crowded in my head,
often i feel like i’m exceeding capacity.
like a thousand word per minute,
like a thousand poems and i could never finish it,
i guess that’s is why i “write like i’m running out of time”
i guess that’s why when i perform i speak so fast
my words get caught and my tongue gets tangled,
i’m stuck looking for new angles,
i haven’t met a cliche i haven’t mangled --
what i’m trying to say is
that there’s a lot of ******* going on in here
and you make it all go…
quiet.
and don’t get me wrong,
i love myself, in the way you’ve got to love yourself
when you don’t really always like yourself.
but still, i spend a lot time wishing i had a better handle on myself.
wishing i could press pause
just to give me enough time unscramble myself,
wishing that i was less;
less difficult, less rough, less soft, less messy.
because sometimes i feel so ******' chaotic
and you...
you make everything stop for just a second.
you make everything about me feel okay.
and now, i don’t know about god
but i believe in love and i believe in poetry.
now, i’m not much for destiny
but i believe in the way you sometimes look at me.
to put it simply, you make me want to write poems
about weezer and way you smile.
simple stuff. good stuff.
and i like you because you never pretended
that you were too cool to know the words,
our lips moving just the same.
because we are stumbling, tumbling through life
and i want to spend mine with people
who aren’t so ******* scared of admitting that.
because i measure my heartbeat in drumbeats,
in what’s pouring through my headphones,
and the fact that you get that makes me feel so much less alone.
all the chords/cords tangled like our hearts on the floor,
i’m not going to write you love song, baby,
i’m going to write you an anthem.
because you and i, we we're composed to same notes.
and i could find a lot of ways to phrase this --
we’re made of the same stuff, stardust, kindred spirits
or something like that;
because i’m so good at words,
but my words aren’t near good enough to find a way to say
that you are the space between silence and noise,
where my heart goes to rest.

Earth (Pangaea)

Pangaea heaved and shifted
beneath the fire-storm sky.
Colliding plates and spewing mountains
shook, roared and thundered
under the brutal chaos
of torrential cataclysms.

In time she yielded her ire
to millennia of pacific rains -
her severed crust
set adrift across the oceans
like gigantic earthen rafts.

Jungles sprang up and terrible lizards
came, grazed and left their bones.
Forests, grains and multifarious beasts
grew and perished in accord
with their past and future destinies.

So here we are - earthbound,
tossed from our mothers' wombs -
fated to live and breed
by the grace of miracles
far beyond our ken.

Beloved mother Gaia,
from whose dust we are raised,
nurture and sustain us
and sing us to our mortal sleep.

2. Air

Air - earth's miracle brew of
     oxygen, nitrogen and all the rest
          meted out in perfect harmony.

Air - silent and still on a moonlit night -
     driver of sheeted rain on window panes -
          and winds that shake the trembling aspens.

Air - author of land and ocean squalls -
     bringer of that ominous pallor
          that presages a tornado's furor

Air - invisible aerial highway
     for majestic eagles and turbo-jets -
         medium of rhetoric and symphonies.

Air – window to the cosmos
      and our fragile life–giving broth -
          unwitting conveyer of toxic alchemy.

Keep watch my sisters and brothers:
     the air we breathe is what we make it
          or rather what we let it be.

3. Water

Water like a capricious deity
     wanders through time and topography -
     cherished and cursed for
     what it gives and what it takes away.

Gentle rains and strident gales
     sculpt rivers and streams
     through forests and plains
     bound for union with the open sea.

Diurnal tides ebb and wane
     at the whim of the charismatic moon.
     Ice mountains advance and retreat;
     rock-strewns moraines left in their wake.

Turbulent currents
     soar over jagged cataracts,
     spraying pastel prisms
     across the misted valleys.

Beneath our all too fragile skins,
     secret sanguine rivers navigate
     our veins and arteries
     bathing organs, limbs and sensors
     with curative balm and sustenance.

Wellspring of all elements,
     fill our daily ladles
     and grant us the will and empathy
     to bequeath the same to our progeny.

4. Fire

Two hundred million years ago
our Paleolithic cousins
seized branches from a burning forest
and stepped into a bold new world.

By the glow of fire-lit caves,
and the scent of searing venison,
they gathered wits and tools
to craft shelters and weaponry.

Their children's children would design
forges and furnaces, factories
and build engines that run on fire.

But their anxious siblings in despair
snatched lightning from the sky
and twisted by fits of anger pride
made also muskets, missiles, bombs
and nuclear Armageddons.

Loki, god of nobler flames
open our blood-stained eyes
and show us the means
to stay our arson lust and
abide by the light of reason.

*Revised and integrated version, December, 2015

in the space between life and death
we're so fragile

He who says escapism cannot solve your problems
has never been a cinephile with depression
who can sit and watch The West Wing in his pants.

A shadow of someone I used to be;
Still fit the silhouette but inside fade.
Stuck down here in the darkness I can't see,
The person standing in the light of day.
That girl who loved the world and life the same,
And threw her heart at everyone she knew,
Guess I can just about recall her name.
It seems like who she was just can't break through,
Those walls that minds put up in times of doubt,
And when that's all there is, sunlight can't help.
Blind eyes get desperate finding their way out,
Back to life in this world I might call hell.

A shadow of someone I used to know,
Without the light, one can't begin to grow.

Who am I today?
I'm a seventeen year old boy from England.
I'm a nineteen year old boy in Australia.
I'm a sixteen year old boy from New York.
This cyber love comes at a cost,
a cost sometimes too high.
I lust for too many.
Too many lust for me.
Will this ever come to an end?
I am very afraid of the power i hold.
Truly, I am a fifteen year old girl.
Not necessarily actually.
I am a fifteen year old female to male transgender human.
I'm from sunny little SoCal.
And I am in an endless cycle of lying about who I am,
for cheap cybersex and thrills,
because i'm too afraid people will not love me.
I am a ******, a freak of nature.
I don't belong.
But I can still pretend for a little while that i'm loved.

There was an orb up the nimbus sky
Jelly, translucent
Absorbing everything that bumps
As it becomes bigger and bigger
Consuming the world...
Afloat in galaxy,
Consuming the stars...
Wallowing planets, comets
Errr... Jupiter's rings!
Black-holes!
Sun, not the moo-                      n
Devouring the whole milky waay--
The  U  N  I  V  E  R  S  E !
Enormous. Colossal. ORB. Emerged!
Oh! Us, Witnessing the outside of galaxies
Only pure light, OBLIVION.
As the orb, like bubbles BURST!             tck.
Reaching TERMINUS.

And that's how everything'll.
**END.

it’s the throbbing kind of pain,
so unlike the burning you are used to
a timeless ache,
that jars you to the core
so different from the fire that
you built yourself from
belying the strength of the armour,
that guards the tender fabric of your soul.

and you knew you were made of stone,
but darling, stone always crumbles
though born of lava,
it turns to dust
and how can you be the exception?

"Maybe someday I'll find someone that actually cares about me."

This is my empire
I am the king
I am the ruler
I am the only one

This is my time
Count the seconds
Count the minutes
Count the hours

This is my crimes
Call me a monster
Call me a killer
Call me a clown

This is my city
Under the floor
Under the boards
Under the lyme

This is my mind
Paint it all red
Paint it all blue
Paint it all ugly

This is my life
I am a husband
I am a leader
I am a son

This is my death
This is my life
This is my time
This is my empire