we're wild creatures
loving, yearning, touching, seeking.

she's all sunlight today,
running, learning, humming, being.

i'm at the mercy of those eyes-- i've realized
she is not the edge of oblivion, but rather hiding in a state of it sometimes.
her detachment to this plane might run rampant but she can't deny this.
she can't deny us. there's sparks when we meet, our auras collide, unseen to human eye.

what a lovely thing, this creature of beauty. we're glimmering, glowing and the golden light reflects from her hair and on to me. she's no angel but i swear it's a halo surrounding us.

i press my cheek to hers. i match gazes, fingers entwined. she grins, and god, i've never seen something more entrancing. all i can do is hold on for dear life.

she holds out her hand and with a simple command, "spin for me,"
and i do. i spin and spin and she smiles with satisfaction. i'm hers, i'm her dancer, even if only for a moment.

one more brief touch, she leaves a sweet chamomile scent and spring air in her wake.

my heart is so full.
this is love, this is love, this is love.

around you, I'm all ellipses. My sentences still make it through though. And my teeth are no longer fragile because I have let many of my secrets out when they threaten to spill over like tea time at noon. I was never an expert at lock jaw but it came as a surprise to find that I am still unlocked around you. There is a certainty now my gullible mouth won't break under the pressure of my past.

I am still trying to break down yours without a battle cry.

we build our characters. your body is "ex lovers, bruises and barriers." your hands are "loose change, determination, extra joints, destruction and creation." your eyes are "newly copper pennies and the season of spring" . I still don't know what I am somedays.

Your eyes remind me of copper pennies I wished on and my green grass youth.
Your hands remind me of all things i let go but never wanted to.
Your chest reminds me of a canvas, half finished, ready for my hands.
Your lips remind me of stolen kisses and illicit library touches.

But mostly you remind me of what it feels like to have a home.

that man has a fever (for flesh),
one would think
that one would
need to be cooled
in order to leave her undressed.

always hanging 'round the ladies
strong and handsome
hollywood smile,
the good adonis, a fair tease.

but his nonage was not dominated
by girlish squeals or hearts,
boys like him were quiet-like
and kept under the dark.

(for what if they found out?)

I.
you know i've always been drawn to the darker parts of
people,
the shades of grey that dapple a soul in impurity--
i adore the artistry of flaws and the orchestration of violent passion.
maybe it's because i've been in the light too long. or maybe it's simply a second nature to want what you're not supposed to want.
I crave the weakness of a sinner in his unfathomable delights.

II.
tempting is my favorite game to play:
i've been told that i taste like a bad habit, walk like an addiction, and have a tendency to leave them wanting more--
but still manage to look like an angel.
that's fine as long as you acknowledge the fact you look like a bad decision that i am more than willing to be hypnotized by.

III.
it almost is painful this reckless longing but it seems
you make me hurt in the places that don't mind hurting.

baby, i've been trying hard not to get in trouble.

but you don't understand when you don't have wanderlust that sews itself into your very bones. you don't love like i do, wild and free. you don't want to ride the edge. you want your 9-5 office job, the picket fence, a perfect wife and children. i'm not saying i don't love you but i can't love restrained and i can't love you perfect. i know i promised forever-- but haven't i told you my middle name was "i make promises i can't keep?". i guess that never came up.

i can't keep living vicariously through lonely jazz singers and voracious cult leaders. call me stupid, but i want to have that drink, i wanna smoke. i'm sorry i had you under the pretense that i was a good little girl. i'm not. i wanna dance until the soles in my shoes are bare and worn. i wanna go running in thunderstorms and play russian roulette with my untamable heart and go wherever i yearn. i look at birds with envy because i am a flightless soul. darling, you're a seed and sooner or later you're gonna want the roots that i can't give you. i need to breathe. that's all i want. my obsession with freedom might destroy me, but god, is there ever a better way to die?

i tell all the lovers i've ever had to let me lay me down on the open road, leave more than skid marks on highways and more than a twist in my bed sheets. i love minds just as much as i love bodies. my past affairs were like wind rushing past but i don't know if i've ever really slowed down because i am ******* reckless. i have no regrets.

i wanna let loose on city streets, shout in the rain, sin on parkway benches and get lost in a tangle of whatever the hell I want to drown in. so please, even though you don't understand half of this feral wild creature i am-- let me live like i'm crazy.

when my mother told me to watch out for things that go bump in the night i thought she was talking about monsters and priests, but lately, i've been thinking it's me.

with love,
a little wild thing

can try to capture beauty,
try to capture expression--
yet as an artist, never satisfied.

i want to do more than catch your likeness on paper
with pen or graphite, desire more than just a role as an avid watcher and portrayer.

i want to learn the hard planes of your body
the ways they could move in junction with mine,
hands with such strength and virility. there is an urge
to bring those fingers to my mouth, or a lone earlobe.

bite down. sharp inhale. that's music.

i want to know the shapes you make, the way a body looks glistened in hard work, trace the indentions in a spine, be familiar with its knobby structure, kindly measure the quiet strength of muscles, the contours of a figure that is a reflection of its environment.

feeling. quiet feeling.

i want to look and really look, study the proportions of smiles, the simplicity in wrinkles and the path of veins, gentle lines that nature already drew for me. especially observations of lines in your eyes. what is your gaze drawn to. don't tell me, show me.

let me understand a deep look. stare at me. let me stare at you.

i just want to draw on you--
human skin is my canvas,
eyes are inspiration,
raw souls are my
new medium,
and
passion is my paint brush.

can i sketch you, love?

When I see you fall asleep,
closed eyes, expressionless face, sprawled form,  I hold my breath until I see you breathe again-- it's true my heart doesn't beat 'til you inhale. you are the most handsome face of death, asleep. I'm afraid if I try to wake you, you won't wake up. and even more afraid that when you're sleeping, you're not really asleep at all.

2. Your hands are not cadavers,
and I know this fact because they are torn and callused. funeral hands are pretty and funeral faces are powdered. make up is not an art for post-mortem, but a sad reflection of what was. I like you a little unkept because that means you're not 6 feet under.

3. I refuse to wash the sheets**
because they smell like us, throes of passion, loving contact.I can't easily let go. all i can remember is clutching them like a lifeline and then clutching you. safe as a cradle, we'd drift off in languorous sleep-- twisted limbs and all. no matter what, we are somewhere in that bed still. and I don't know if I ever want to climb out.

city streets won't tell me what sunsets spent without you already know. they can't whisper like our hushed conversations--pillow talk on the highway is for gypsy lovers but we're not caravans because i'm the only one drifting.  i'm lost as ever, and in being lost, i'm so free. i am directionless yet i'm yearning for the taste of living. does it taste like your skin? i wouldn't know. there's a certain loneliness that clings to each 2 a.m. pondering. i ache. i ache and i ache.

i always had fondness for lying in an ocean bed since waves were a warmer blanket than most arms i have known. drowning is a fantasy of mine but i didn't know it was just as possible to drown in a person as it was in the sea. riptides have nothing on you.

i could tell you i love you, i could. I always will in some capacity. "what-if's" cling to the roof of my mouth for much longer than peanut-butter sandwiches and lunch time. i make myself sick with remembrance. i dream about your eyes. you're far away from me, reaching for a pillow, or maybe even another set of hands. i ache.*

and i know they told me otherwise, but love is a question, love has never been the return reply.

I have had more lovers than winter jackets
and maybe that's why I'm never cold.

It wasn't the way she walked or the way she spoke.

It wasn't even the way she was so distant, mysterious, perplexing, an everlasting enigma. It wasn't the way she could never quite articulate the distance from her body or the distance from everyone else.

It wasn't the way she didn't want to be kissed and only wanted *** because it was rough and made her feel something. It wasn't the way she loved ****** art, the way it looked at a ****** scene.

It wasn't the way she could smile. Intense. Everything she did was all or nothing, everything was the intensity of one extreme or the other. The only conception of "in-between " she had, was love.

It was the way she walked away, leaving behind a massacre of broken hearts.

*(you never had me at "hello", but god, what an impression of "goodbye")

I don't have the time to criticize you,
I'm too busy improving myself.

oblivion is a place that i've always wanted to know,
since it sounded like peace to someone like me who's never
quite convinced it to stay long enough to have anything more
than a slight impression on my pillow and
perfume stained sheets.
even so, i'm still sorry for existing
as an unfortunate vortex of bad ideas, apologies,
and impulsive behavior--
i liken myself to fragmented floorboards or
drifting rooftops, a tornado of good intent,
but you can't  build something steady when your vision is red
and your state of mind is blurry--
god, i'm trying not to let myself be
the cause of civilian casualty.
painted pieces of "could've beens" and "what if's" separated only by the winds caused by a torrent of ****** punching fists--
there are holes in the wall that are shaped just as much by
my ex lovers as they are by my own hands.
i'm sorry i'm not more stable since i never quite
mastered the art of construction,
i'm sorry i am less four walls and more
collapsed doorway,
i'm sorry i was a synonym for broken
and she was more of a safe place than i could ever be.
that's all i ever wanted to be for you, you know,
a safe place
even when my eyes spell out danger
and i try not to embody the word "home-wrecker"
as much, even when
cracks form around my skull
every time i realize that you never were the type
to buy a house in tornado country--
i never considered myself deserving of the word "home"
but for once, i wish i was.

Walking into a store can be dazzling
and distracting,
accepting the culture to embezzle,
anything to lure the customer
and make a consumer.

But walk in, and find
the salesperson to ruin the image:
"hello, can I help you? What are you looking for?"

(not your help, thanks)

Similarly, self-promotional smucks
give me the same feeling.

I'm not going to check out your mixtape, I'm not going to check out
your youtube, I refuse to be bought, just because you asked nicely.

you tasted like shattered glass
and I was never one to walk away
from loving cold hearts and mosaic minds,
while mosaics are considered broken art
still sometimes I wonder if the same could be spoken of broken hearts--
mine never looked quite as good
        as the concrete and sea-glass odds and ends
configuration that sat brightly on my mantelpiece though.

   I also never quite figured out why my name always sounded
just as disjointed off your lips--
why my name never felt normal when it reverberated off the walls as
it was released from your gray toned voice
and why the syllables seemed to sound
less like a moniker, and more like a broken apology--
my name never rhymed with "sorry" but for some reason, it did
when you said it.
your name still sounds like a sin I have yet to forgive
and I've contemplated going to church just to hear
it be exposed to confession--
but I realize now that I confessed all the sins I've ought to say
and this feeling is merely the leftover aftertaste of
shattered glass and blood bitten gums
gnawing at the corner of my mouth.

you once told me,
"the past is the only thing that matters
because it never changes."
I don't remember what I told you,
but I don't smash empty wine glasses anymore
just to feel
like we never parted.

Outside: it is scary, mean and cruel,
but don't worry,

this is a safe place.

Outside: it can hurt, and bite, and fool,
but don't mind it because

this is a safe place.

under covers and warmth, you want to erase my nightmares for a while. let us kiss away fears.  take my demons. hide our bodies and whispered sweet nothings
dwell in this fort of blankets and sheets,
since

this is a safe place.

Bury our love here, let this be not a graveyard, but a garden to remember, a haven of our romance,
don't cry,
don't fret,

you're safe, this is a safe place.

"I'm broken in places people don't even have names for. I'm sad. I'm nothing to romanticize. God, I'm falling apart, I'm in pieces, why can't you see?"

"You're beautiful, even when you're in pieces."

This is a portrait of abandoment:
rusty spokes, faulty breaks, and negligent owners.

(I'm still lying on the sidewalk too, waiting for a reason to shift gears.)

loving him is poetry
and kissing him is art.

i'm used to being the creator
but being created from the affection
in his hands
and sculpted from intimacy
is a feeling like no other--
he doesn't just look, he sees me
every stray brush stroke
every drawn line
every brilliant color,
down to my skeleton,
he strips me of pretense and glows
with acceptance.

i am a bared soul,
battered and bruised,
shaken and scarred,
but even so--

i'm something beautiful in a gaze
like that.

The dexterity of created complexity,
to at which rate what we ponder--
to fabricate or conceal,
which is harder?

"In commemoration of this great inspiration... 50% off of entire shop! Hurry before store closes!"

sigh

*because a consumer market and materialism are surely the best way to
remember and celebrate a man who strove for the best in humanity.

my wrists still hurt more from your rough hands
pinning me to the floor,
than anything I've ever done to them before.

my head still aches more from screaming,
rather than by an old concussion lingering.

my eyes still cry and leak over,
but I'm not sure why anymore.

But as long as it's don't ask, don't tell,
I'll be fine.

No, I don't love her in the conventional sense.

I love her as an artist.

I love her with the profound human greatness of hope and all the beautiful qualities of humanity I find redeemed within the motions of her lips when she sings. I love her by the ocean, by city streets, drunk under stars, with no context. Just as every place is contaminated with memory, every place is filled with possibilities of her presence. I love her with the experience of an old soul and with the passion of youth. There is no reason behind it, yet it is full of purpose. I love her mouth, not because I want to kiss it, but because it is a mouth that embodies all the things that speak violently. She is a piece of the universe with irrevocable flaws that I came to understand and unspeakable beauty that I came to admire. I love her in my sketch book, I love the flicker of emotion in eyes, I love her on painted window panes and in the darkness of night.

I love her for the sake of loving her. I don't love with expectation of my affection to be returned. And from the realization of loving her, I have come to this conclusion;

I love her purely, unconditionally, and truthfully.