You, my good man,
are vain.
With your swaggering walk
and the way you dress,
you think that any
woman would swoon
at the sight of you.
But all they do is stare at your
suit-clad self and your huge
goofy grin.
If you think they’re impressed,
your designer sunglasses must be
blocking out their snarls.
You think your voice is to women
like a flute is to a snake,
a lure.
The truth is hidden in the
knot of your tie,
behind the dark lenses of
your sunglasses,
the spot where your
tongue meets
your teeth.

She stands there,
simply,
cocking her head like
a dog.
She doesn’t understand
the glare of your eyes or
the dip of
the corners of your mouth.
She is innocent,
staring at her Converse,
toes turned in,
hips jutted out.
She twiddles her thumbs,
pulls at her shirt,
just so her eyes don’t
have to meet yours.
You take her in
your arms, but
she pushes you
away,
taking with her
the perfume smell of
gardenias that
you miss.

Staring out at the horizon,
I watch the rain hit the
ground like bullets,
clouds passing
like they don’t see
me below.
The storm washes away
our destruction,
the demons we wish to
hide beneath the dirt.
It is our salvation,
purging the Earth of us.
We are the erosion,
the acid that decays everything
that matters.
We strip animals of their
homes, take their young to
feed ours,
watch the trees as they
fall to the ground.

Give me a lazy
afternoon,
underneath white sheets and
a setting sun.
Your snores are light as
you sleep next to me,
your face gentle like the
hands that hold my waist.
Unlike you, I can't
seem to sleep.
I listen to the voices and
laughter outside of
your bedroom window,
watching your
chest rise and fall,
the deep honey
glow of your cheek against
mine.
And when you wake,
you don't speak,
staring at me with
sleepy eyes and
quiet lips.
You kiss my cheek,
and nestle back into the
hollow of my neck,
falling asleep until the
moon takes us away.

I can't breathe anymore;
there's a weight on my
chest like a boulder.
I'm numb,
although my ribs
are breaking.
I can hear them
crack, but I can't
feel their splintered
ends in my sides.
I'm drowning;
my thoughts consume me.
They coat my throat like
tar, sticky and black.
They hold down my
tongue, make it
heavy like lead.
I'm suffocating,
hands around my neck,
blue in the face,
red in the lips,
crack and dried up,
a desert in the
winter snow.
I'm bleeding out,
ruby staind,
purple bruises.
I'm singing an
auria,
a muffled hymn,
a cry for help.

I am not graceful,
I am not good.
I stumble over words
when I’m speaking.
I take too long thinking of
what to say,
and sometimes what comes out
isn’t right.
I dream too much and live
away from reality,
using ink and pen as
my ultimate escape.
I cry too much and smile
too little;
I yell when I’m excited and
shut up when I’m mad;
I never seem to find the right
balance of anything.
I am not perfect;
if only perfection
was an easy
poem to write.

He’ll never see her eyes again,
two glossy marbles glued into a
pair of eye sockets,
blue and vacant like a
November sky.
He won’t kiss her cheeks or hands,
her temples or wrists;
he won’t feel her skin
on his lips,
smooth and cold as ice on
an abandoned road.
He won’t hear her voice say his name
over and over again,
a broken record.
She is spring freezing into winter,
graciously,
cautiously,
and she’ll never thaw out.