clinging desperately
a lone leaf
on an autumn branch,
enduring the cold winds that blow--
the breath of winter,
the darkened skies,
the bare branches of skeleton trees.
one more push and it will fall,
swoop down in all poetic glory,
to paraphrase life's forgotten misfit ideals--
no matter the tenacity of the leaf,
how strong its stem holds,
falling is fate,
and rotting is
inevitable.

when i've exhausted all my resources
i find that the material that i
use for inspiration
is you--
nothing makes me angrier and
nothing makes me happier,
darling,
you're killing me
you're using my own words against me
you wrapped up your insanity and sent it
on express mail to my mind--
oh yes, you know you're killing em
and you're playing me--
i'm another domino, and you're the  rolling
dice ready to knock me down, you're the
wild Ace that's gonna blow apart my plans,
the chessboard is your plea for power
and you just took my queen--
you own all the real estate in monopoly of my heart
and
twister is not just for flexible bodies, but for how much i will end up
bending over backwards for you--
you know i haven't mastered my poker face and you're already have made
a full house in my bones.
Games, you act like there are no games, but
i know you're trying to break me
and the saddest part is...
i wouldn't mind
being a little bit broken
by you.

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.

my sexuality is nothing
to be ashamed of.

do i look like a temporary replacement
or is it just written in subtle letters
in the spaces between my eyelids?

tell me if i talk too much.
i remember every word of endearment to be passed through
your lips. are they meaningless?
does "beautiful" slide off the tongue so easy, it has forgotten its own
meaning whenever you speak it?
does the word "amazing" leave a rancid taste in your mouth?
how many other places has it been? i'm sure it left an imprint on
the tongue of your ex lovers.

i'm sorry, i'm not usually so passive aggressive,
but i swear i can feel you leaving me and my insecurities to howl at a lonely moon.

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")

abandoned at the alter--
or just abandoned.
I have nothing to hold on to
except the tatters
of this deceased
laced satin, this crumpled
veil, covering hope and covering light.
one shoe, its matching partner had scuffs to
begin with--what a fraud.
white is supposed to be the color of new beginnings
and black is for funerals--
but I guess white is the new black,
I'm left to fend by myself, nothing
to celebrate--
the cake was too pretty to be eaten
anyway.

and don't you know it,
we're all in our wedding dresses,
looking abstractly at broken watches,
dust-filled corners,
waiting for the groom
that will never
come.

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

i can't put in words quite how elated this makes me. i'm embracing the feelings you give me. some of these feelings i have yet to name but they are more a part of me now then my ghosts. there is so many lights in me. there is so much shadow too. but it all is jumbled now, tossed and turned; a welcome turbulence.

i don't know whether to laugh or cry or kiss your face. maybe even do all three. there is not enough of me for you to touch because all of me doesn't encompass this intangible cast of craziness that expands beyond my body. i am finally breathing. i'm not free yet but god i'm close. freedom tastes like time spent with you and you linger all around me.

i can't barely express this, truly. i have the urge to shout from car windows and city tops. i want to run and tumble. i want to lay with you in spring grass and get lost in fields and woods. i want to do so many things, things out of my reach, out of my body.

god, these words will not be enough. but i still try.

The darkness was more your significant other
than I ever could be and it's easy to see why
since you spent much more time conversing with your father's pistol than you spent admiring the way my curves are shaped.

I've always wanted to ask you if that cough medicine tasted better than my skin, but you fell asleep before I could tell you. I wonder if that's why you would cradle your bottle of pills, the way I used to wish you'd cradle me.
Is it better company than my eyes?
Or is that where you go so you can't see my eyes?
I'm not the pinnacle of judgment -- you can't escape every pair of eyes that follow you.

I would knock on the window panes sometimes because there was no **** on your door and no doorbell to let you know I was there. You never really answered.

I became a shadow -- I thought you'd love me darker.

So I faded my smile and faded my jeans. My nails were black, I wore my lips dark maroon and I began to acquaint myself with your reaper on Friday nights when no one else was in the house. I never touched your pills though.

But I'm finding that even a shadow has nothing on your fondness for picking out your gravestone. Cigarette smoke fills your lungs better than my perfume and I can't compete with your harem of dark habits.

So I'm going out of town tonight with my lips colored like berries and I'd ask if you'd be the one to smudge it but
you're more into dying and less into a kiss of life.

The night you told me I didn’t put stars in your eyes anymore was the night
I didn’t see any stars myself. I thought we were written in constellations but that was more hopes
of my own then fate. Yes, I was upset. But I wasn’t in love. And that’s why it didn’t hurt.
I never lied when I said there was a moment when I thought we were some type of forever.
Do you remember the time when you were out by the lake of New Hampshire with the most gorgeous sunrise,
and you told me all you could think about was how much better it’d be if I was there to see it too?
I told you it didn’t matter but when I woke up the next morning, I felt detached from where I was.
There’s a part of me that wishes I saw that sunrise too.
But that’s just how it is.
All I have is stories of “has been”s and “could’ve been”s. A collection of “almost” and never seen sunrises—
the memories carefully stacked on top of each other, organized and filed away, collecting dust.
Somewhere I still think we exist though, an eternal splotch of sunshine and mutual caring, some place where our love didn’t hurt.
Somewhere there’s a lace wedding veil and a matching tux that were actually worn. Somewhere there’s the unfinished scrapbook I put together that has more pages added to it. Somewhere there’s a collection of passports from all the road trips we should’ve taken.
Somewhere out there, we are the type of forever I intended us to be.
Somewhere, in a little cabin in New Hampshire, surrounded by evergreens and daffodils,
there’s a little girl with the same name as my favorite movie character
with your hazel eyes and my dark hair.

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.

oh *******,
i'm not under the control of fate,
remember?
the government controls us.

lips that were shaped by cupids
saints could worship
and god did I worship
them--
from afar.
What can I do when
bible verses sound like
poetry on her tongue?
What else can I do when
her hips are my steeple
and I can't sully them
with sin?
The lines on her hands are
my koran
and I was so scared to ruin them with
my ***** palms that she was gone
before I could prostrate myself
before her,
in devotion.

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.

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.

I'm a ****** rose,
I'm deathly nightshade,
I'm angry poison ivy,
And my vines have seemed to strangle
everything else that tried to grow--
loving me might just **** you.

But maybe you like suffocation,
the taste of sweet poison on
lips that have spoken nothing but
infallible sin,
it is fated, written in the very way
you submit yourself to the storm
that I am.

If anything, there is one thing that I've learned:
as much as daisies are pretty little things,
you're not gonna find one that would make you
do all the crazy things I could make you do.

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

I have shifted the tide, so to speak--
not held captive to the flaws of men
or the romanticism of it--
I no longer have the inclination
to adore atrocity or
to revel in insanity,
But,
in sanity,
I am numb to these vibrations,
numb to the feeling of happy or sad,
because coping is another word
for "robot"-- I'm the analyst now,
I'm in love with logic,
and so life goes on,
without a further nod from me.

I should feel the sharp sting of Betrayal,
as easy as it may--
I have forgotten many Memories,
and forgotten which ones have Stayed--

You gave your so called love to Another,
You gave "our song" as "hers"--
As I was once a beautiful Angel,
am now the devil that you curse--

and How carefully do we tread upon,
the cracks within our faults--
are only the things we let up on,
pretending to exalt--

So it seems only right that I would write,
a Vindictive note Of You--
But darling, I haven't an ill-intent
and the past, I cannot rue.

I fall in love
with bits of people,
rarely a whole person.
Like crooked smiles on subway stations
or untied shoelaces
or favorite books
or eyes that look like blinking galaxies--
I see the puzzle laid at my feet,
your collarbones, your self-hatred, your bitten down fingernails, your detachment, the wars of your mind, the curve of your spine, the way you scrawl your name with indifference--
All these broken fragments that
shatter and surround me
like the wine glass I dropped,
Shards of glass,
your eyes
reflect me
the deep blood red wine
Drops like crystalline desire--
I might romanticize your flaws
and I might make walls of disillusionment,
but I swear I'll love you like you're whole.

when it began:
dissonance.
a mind disjointed,
filled with a million words,
a thousand broken promises
and maybe a few nolstalgic memories.
there's nothing to romanticize when
everything collides.

A lonely hour catalyst:
chain reactions like fast paced domino sets,
falling rapid and helpless,
trailing below.
wavelengths of a thought process contaminated by restlessness.

note:
let sleeping poets lie (awake)
to dream out their dreams
and make futile wishes on dead comets
and empty sunrises.

miracles are a religious experience, Jesus turned wine
into water--maybe I can get intoxicated
enough to not notice the difference.

in love with so many people and beautiful songs and sunsets i've witnessed--
pieces of my heart on every street corner and welcome mats where
i am able to feel human,
adorn the sweetest of tragic heartache.

there is no point to any of it. but there doesn't have to be.


i just do.

You're not just "beautiful".

No, I mean, yes, you are beautiful, but jesus, when I say "beautiful"
it's not beauty like perfect "golden, glowing, soft halo" or whatever the hell writers like to glorify about some strands on your head
or having a "radiant smile" or "blush of a fair maiden" or things that wouldn't even make a lick of sense
if not for
biological evolution, physical attraction and Shakespeare.

No it's beauty that your mind is radiant, it's a tragic galaxy that I want
nothing more than to live in
and your heart is beating and it continues to
and you continue to, even when
you feel defeated
because it's you and your mind battle
and you scream out in
every way possible, your spirit and voice is  an orchestra that resonates somewhere in between my ribcage and my lungs and the words
the very words you use,
doesn't that tell more about you than
how "skinny your thighs are"
or how your "eyes glisten in the moonlight"?
Doesn't that tell me more than your "curving nose"or the "sway of the hips"?

No I'm not going to ******* love you for your "porcelain skin" and the
stupid "contours of your spine", I won't worship you like a poet --
I'm not going to praise your "romanticizing self-destruction",
which is so over used,--
can't you understand, beauty is not the face you wear but
the beauty that rakes itself over coals,
the sacrifices you make and the passions you care for,
the darkest secrets that you harbor
at any given midnight, and
even the way you like your ******* tea in the morning.

So when I say you're "beautiful", just know I'm not a poet.

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.

Mark me
like a permanent marker stain on my collarbones,
a smear of bruised flesh, painted with possessive fury.
I'll mark you with my nails,
crescents like waning moons on your back--
but we aren't waning,
we're waxing,
glowing,
night lovin'
creatures.

All I can remember though is the taste-- skin and sin and the way you made me shudder your name, oh god, such fire.
But maybe it wasn't enough, because as much as I loved the burning, maybe you just felt the aftermath.

Was my love the taste of ash to that archaic soul of yours?
You love your smoke though, breathing in my burning.

Baby, I'm a moon and you were a killer asteroid that left craters with the immensity of your short lived love.

But the hurting never felt so sweet.

we're


3-dimensional and consider this form




of existence



more important



yet




lines of words



are




two-dimensional



and



they



immortalize us.

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.

"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.