As the beat breaks,
the floor trembles,
the records spin, and we
all dance
on the hardwood floor
covered in spilt beer
cocktail napkins,
at a house show in DC,
where I'll always remember
rushing on the stage
and waving my cellphone,
as though I brightened
the light in a beacon
tucked away in a lighthouse
on a grotesque rock formation,
in the corner of the James River.
I studied her movements:
tiny and minute,
enough to bring exposure
to the deejay scratching records
on a set of turntables,
cut from a maple tree.
The lights cut off,
like a road raged driver
who maneuvers frantically
around my vehicle,
this vessel containing my space,
personal and untouched,
a lonely cabin in a dense forest.
Now I'm considering whether
I should break the beer bottle over
the bar booth, or send her an emoji, a meme, or a gif,
to let her know my heart
possesses multitudes,
beyond the scope of your timeline. Found life in
the bottom of a Murakami Well
deeper and larger than the cavern
behind the hidden waterfall,
in a tourist attraction in Chattanooga.
This is for when I'm sorry; make me
forget
about drawings you’ve sketched
on the back of your pair of converses.
So do me a solid,
give me the first home video
of your newborn crawling around
the carpet, or the dance floor.
And then tell me why can't I be great too.

Sometimes your love may come and go,
like light shining down from the sky
before the clouds set in and night arrives.
Tomorrow, the sunlight may never show
replaced with the rain streaming down my face
It'll keep hurting for as long as we live.
Please let me have some more time to rest
so that we'll have these days to spend in bliss
"is it weird that I can't stop thinking about you"
were once words you've said.
Now you say, "You've grown those words
in the garden of your mind."
Maybe I have, watered them with beer,
but that's something you'll never get to know.
I wrote you these lines
for you to read, next time you gaze
into the mirror. And I'm afraid,
we'll never get another chance
to walk your dog across the park
while we hold hands.
I don't want to sleep with someone else,
nor do I want to sleep alone.
So I stay up, late at night,
smoking and overthinking,
staying awake,
not going to bed.

Drink the first beer after you wake up. The door to her bedroom is closed, so don't play the acoustic guitar, loudly, if at all. A dog is laying on the lumpy couch. Try your best not to disturb the dog who’s name is Pasco. You hear her talking upstairs, but you don’t go say, hi. Put on your coat, grab your smokes from your pocket, go outside to the porch and light up. No one is outside. It’s dark and the birds are chirping, and she hates when they do that. Do you best not to drink too fast, as you down the second beer. Try not to think about how she accepts you, or rejects you. Think about Virginia. Think about Chicago. Think about LA. Then breathe in deep. Don’t pass out, as you drink the third and fourth beer, one after the other. Throw the keys into your laptop bag, so you don’t try to reach in there and grab them. Sit down on the stoop. Pick up your cig from the ashtray, light it again, and smoke it. She doesn’t care as much and you’re going to have to be okay with this fact of life.

Don’t sleep on the couch tonight.

We walked through the woods,
when it was growing thick with shadows, the way smoke funnels
out a chimney. She wore a hoodie and yoga pants,
attire to match her mood: relaxed and comfortable.
Her eyes reminded me of what lies beneath puddles,
after a rainstorm had passed through
the small hometown, which disowned you.
We wrote songs while sitting on tree stumps,
chewing tobacco and drinking gin.
Because, we wanted people to write movies about us,
like the ones they played before the explosion
took out a half of Paris, DC, and Sydney.
Test me again, and I will never talk to you,
you said those words and you meant it.
I regret ever running
into you at the house,
and falling for you,
like how I'm falling
over on my ***.
And now we will never text,
have a conversation,
or hold each other in bed.
Kiss me goodnight,
but don't say
that you ever cared about me,
because I don't believe
in the lyrics,
your favorite musician sings.

friday morning,
we wake up hungover
from last night's binge drinking,
because even though we love our jobs,
no one really wants to work for their entire lives,
when so many things are unanswered,
perverted, and misconstrued.  
hashtag all of those millennial catchphrases,
to garner hearts from your friends
who you haven't seen in years,
friends who work in San Fran,
Chicago, Greenwich Village.
crank up your laptop speakers,
as Neon Indian's Polish Girl
plays that **** synth,
and take a drag from a P-Funk,
before your Grandma hits your
shoulder with the newspaper daily—
right after she speaks in Vietnamese,
asking you what is your name,
because she has Alzheimer’s.
but in these social media days,
isn't everything that is worth mentioning to your sister,
everything that is worth fighting for,
everything that is ****** in this world,
on the internet (maybe, just Twitter tbh).
screenshot the cat meme you like,
save it,
share it,
move on.
if only she wasn't allergic to cats,
maybe it could have worked out.
that was 7 years ago.
—*** ova it. Then, mix your red bull with your coffee,
because the next 10 hours of your life,
will be revolving around caring about people
other than your ungrateful and ingratiating ***.
don't cry,
when I say good-bye.
stay for a while, under the shade of the rooftop
where the deejay spins Frank Ocean
and Frank Sinatra records,
as everyone is drinking scotch, or Yuengling,
and ashing over the veranda bansister,
; the bad boys try to open their souls
to the good girls. and the bad girls,
reveal too much to the good boys.
we devoured those drugs, as though
they were jelly beans from a convenience store,
and then we broke into the store
and ate some more.
break the coals on top of the hookah,
puff, puff, pass—
inhale, exhale,
fit the deformed piece
back into the Dinosaur puzzle,
and crawl back into bed,
pull the covers over
your trembling body,
shut your eyes,
and reflect,
for the day is heavy with regret
and unsaid things.

give me a chance
to take you out
for one last night
in the city,

as the angels sleep on the sidewalks,
and the reptiles snore in the white house.

I'm crying alone
while your friends check their phones,
smoke their vapes,
and Brady the dog nudges my leg
with his snout,
soft as a napkin
wiping breadcrumbs off a table.

Chipotle before we write diary entries
for our children who look like your
ex-boyfriend. Tell them stories
past their curfew,
as their heads cloud with dreams,
where nothing but beauty blooms,
and sadness goes to pasture,
to be cooked on a rotisserie,
and spit out into bits.

like your flesh when it's been burnt by a lighter.
so listen up,
finish your game of FIFA,
then make me laugh,
so that I could forget about yesterday's fight.

Late in the evening, the child takes off her reading glasses
And lays on the glass floor with blurry sight and an open reality.
While her textbooks blaze their myths
in the hearthside under the black coals,
By the window is a telescope
with a scratched up mirror, the knobs can’t be adjusted.

On the table are her laminated note cards
with trivial knowledge written
in fancy cursive.

The cards slip from the countertop and drift unto dust clouds.

That is suspended in a broken imagination.
Her handwriting sits on top of weightless ambitions
and sinks through the melting mesh net.

Cough syrup puddles pollute the kitchen sink,
purple pools of empty dreams.

Undercooked food for her thought
is smoking in the oven,
but she knows the smoke will clear soon;
all that is needed is time, time and space.

Everything that matters gets clogged
up in the sink’s drain, her thoughts,
and her sanity.

She once believed she had a connection with God,
but that illusion
Left her with a soggy tissue box
just like her high-school sweetheart.
Nicholas Sparks’s novels are the bottomless hole,
which she jumps into
each night, not even pretending to trip over the ledge.

The grandfather clock laughs with her
and doesn’t act his age,
Right below him sitting on a plush pedestal
is Breakfast at Tiffany’s,
The novel not the movie.
It sits upright with its legs crossed just as a lady would,

Black sunglasses to correct her eyesight
when everything collapses in a man’s world.

The stardust on the windowsill eats
through her emotional doll house, she
Yearns for a thrill like getting hit
by a chloroform dart in her breast. She desperately

wants an intoxicating heart sickness.
Wine glasses stand in line patiently
Waiting for her to fill them up
and then swallow their anxiousness away.

She thinks of her bubbly mother
who smiles while her Dad beats her.
But every evening, she ties an apron around her waist,
turns the chicken broth stew into escape from perfection.
She uses a wooden ladle,
but longed for a silver spoon

When all she had were Vogue magazines and the black and white pictures.

The girl get up from the carpet floor,
and leans over her half-opened window.
Outside the fireflies battle the moths
for the attention of a dying lamppost.
As the flame is cremated, a street-smart ***
rolls down the street in his shopping cart,

Steering the cart with the negative weight of newspapers.
The girl lies back down

And her lighter flickers
under a torn page of a child’s diary, she twirls around
Her spectacles searching for a woman in the reflection.
But she can’t see anything

human, just an animal
who lusts for a world that exists only in Tinsel Town.

Thoughts of waiting tables in the evening
and casting calls in the morning.
Another girl who wants to be a golden star
that never shines underneath a concrete sidewalk