the way you wanted me
is too much to bear
now
my shaking hands
and solemn acceptance
are gone
i just want you
the look in your eyes
the guttural moans
the way you said
“make love to me”
is always haunting
in my time of need
and
i go back to when
my lips were hot
on your bare skin
cry out
and continue
to wish forever

I kiss like
a thunderstorm,
crashing into your lips
with the force of a
hurricane, I haven't felt
the rain in far too long

There is a promise
sealed to your mouth,
a record you can feel
beneath your tongue

reminding you that
I'll stay forever
locked in your eyes --
I won't move until
you break your gaze

I kiss like
I'm dying, the candle
flickering down to
the wax, no amount of
kindling can revive me
from a death like this

And when your breath
unfolds from the back
of your throat, you'll
kiss me back to life,
falling back into step
with everything
I knew before,

your bricklayer's tongue
chiseled between
my teeth --
we fit
like rungs on a ladder,
pulling me back to the surface

I kiss
like a firestorm,
knowing that
one day
something
will ******* away

Tonight
the sky stretches,
yawning, awakening
in front of me: it's been
a long and gentle sleep

The paint clogging
my lungs has cleared,
the stains around my eyes
rubbed away, maybe
by your hands on my face

And your hands,
they stick, love like
a film of dust that settles
over my skin, coloring
me pink

We are sunk
in this madness,
tied together like
the knots in your boots,
messy tangle of thoughts

You know,
there are stories
buried in your nail beds
I can't wait to discover.
But in this dream tonight,
that full moon
shining on your face

Night sky opens up,
pulls us in tight
And I know, the two of us?
We could sleep for days.

"I expected better from you..."

She has a way of making me feel like a real man,
as she plants her legs across my chest
and whispers into my ear,
her tongue inches from my face
inches from my mouth
feet from where I want her to be.

My eyes close as she drapes her tongue over mine
I feel into her cheek and a nausea rises.
You tasted like coconuts and your hands were rough as sand.
I love the beach.
She tastes like picnic sandwiches and her hands feel like cold rubber.
I love the beach.

And, "If only, if only!" the Red Rover would cry
we played all the day and I had fun with her.
But I could only have fun playing with you.
And how desperately, suddenly ******
the press of my teeth had become
as I realized we are picnicking still.

I let my mind wander.
Kissing is a sport for the focused and lonely.

"...they say you're the best."

I promised myself. I met you and I did everything I could to bring you down, to break your obvious beliefs in your beauty. I worked and worked to get you to feel like ****, so that I saw you as nothing but a filthy little ****. An average adolescent marring the face of society. I assumed you knew you were flawless. I mean, how could you not? Look at you! Listen to you! Listen to me. I promised myself I would not let this happen.

But it happened. That’s what I keep telling myself: It. Just. Happened to be the right things you said to get me feeling this way. How you asked me simple questions and actually cared about the answer. Cared about me. But I just kept whispering, “He’s nothing, he’s nothing, he’s nothing but the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. Brad, you can not **** this up.”

Yet here I am. Sitting in this archaic basement, listening to your words as they shift my views. Listening to my heart as it beats ever faster. The drugs in my veins urge me, they beg me to pull you in. To show you how much I care for you, how many questions I can ask and actually listen for the answer. Tell me it all. My hands glide behind your head and I lean in. Inches away, you whisper, “I’m in love with her.”

My head shifts to make this almost-kiss an always-hug. Her. The girl that makes you happy. That fair creature with her carcinogenic cheeks and strings of average hair. Her bountiful mind of average thoughts. Her average *******. I can’t be that, not for anyone. Not even for you.

You ask me what to say. How to tell someone you are in love with them. So I speak, your arms wrapped around me in the pale darkness of my eyelids. I tell you everything I have wanted to say. I give my speech that I have prepared in the lonely darkness of my room, or in the nights spent staring at you as you sleep beside me. I tell you I love you.

The saturated lights of reality bleed in as my eyes hesitantly open. “Well spoken, Brad,” you whisper in my ear, right in my ear. Your breath is warm, and I want it. Your pulse is slowed, I have to raise it. Your mind is made, and I can never change it. So I give you an always-hug, and imagine that never-kiss.

“Tell her that,” I say, “And there’s no way in hell she can turn you down.”

There are power lines
buried in your wrists,
barbed wire fantasies
dying to escape

You and I,
we were fingerprints,
we were the ink stains
left behind

We were the frost left
aching on the windows
after winter has gone,
we were feathers drifting
down from the sky after
the geese have flown

We were the song
played during the credits,
we were the silence after
the storm, we were the glow
at the end of a perfect kiss

We were the hearts
that had never been broken,
we were the breeze that had
never been touched,

You touched me like
a sandstorm, like the flames
licking up the pyre on the day
Joan of Arc died, you touched me
like a fingernail moon,
longing for the sun

We spent our days in the sun,
our chapped lips turning red
under the sky, the paper dreams
you never gave me, because

if there's one thing I know,
it's that my waiting arms were
always waiting, you never
let your hurricane heart sweep me
up in the storm, I never knew
your mother died until I saw it
on the news, you had a life

outside of this and I never knew.
But if there's one thing I know, it's that
my heart stopped the day you let me
brush your freckles across your face
like wayward strands of hair

That little mouth
open,
soul escaping
through your lips