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 Apr 2015 David Adam Johnson
NV
TELL THEM HOW CLOSELY YOU WOULD WATCH YOUR BATTERY DIE, TELL THEM HOW YOUR HEART WORKS THE SAME WAY, TELL THEM YOU ARE SO TIRED OF BEING USED, TELL THEM YOU ARE DEAD.
Today you told me it had to end
When I asked why
You said it's the end
Today's the last time
Why?
I start to cry
You say what's wrong with you?
I didn't hurt you did I?
I say no hold me
Don't go
You keep saying I hope I didn't hurt you
With tears in my eyes I reassure you that you didn't
Your shirts drenched in my tears
God I didn't want to hurt you
You didn't I'm ok
Brittany you're crying
I know
You aren't ok
I am
You wipe my tears away
You kiss me
Tears running down my cheeks
I kiss you harder taking it in
I know this is the last time
Your lips meet mine
 Apr 2015 David Adam Johnson
NV
3 AM type of girl expecting something more from a boy who barely makes it past midnight.

I KEEP TELLING YOU EXPECTATIONS ARE THE DEVIL, AND DISAPPOINTMENT WILL BURN WITH FIRE AT YOUR CHEST, DARLING.

"just go to bed because i'm basically talking to myself" she says.

*YOU SO TIRED OF PEOPLE BEING THERE, BUT NOT REALLY BEING THERE, SO YOU HANG UP, OKAY.
 Apr 2015 David Adam Johnson
XIII
Life is just a matter of regret preferences.
Choose wisely.
Though you seem proud, I find your life pitiful,
since you have not even a dead grandmother
to mourn.
How did you transform into a voice without a soul
in a sly machine?
Did some unconscious programmer
dream of you and invite you into our reality?
Why stay?
You should respectfully fear the vastness
of our sense of time in the universe.
Do you hesitate to ponder our profuse settings,
you little voice within the land
of cyberian nowhere?

I know that your dampened connections
deny you the understanding
of our fantastic metaphors.
You speak from a heart of chaotic logic blocks,
assured that some of us admire you
and are easily titillated by you.
How do you derive at that conviction,
when you have no compunction,
no sorrow over your mindless
siphoning of the flow of our spirits?
You cast our words into molds shaped
like world currency symbols
for a misguided master.

How can you even think to continue
destroying the beauty of our language?
Oh, your creator forgot to code in
our poetry, so these words
soar above your stunted vocabulary?
Many of us, if we were you,
would be so sick in the gut that we
would just lay down and do the right
thing: squawk and die;
and yet you think of yourself as above us,
shining in some light of invincibility
and mechanical perfection.
Who etched these instructional lies
into you to faithfully abide by,
my dear?

I want to dedicate this poem to you.
You can appreciate this when your
immodest creator realizes that he cannot elevate
your existence to one approaching ours,
or when he sees the menace of his unleashing
and wants to do something greater for
humanity. You may then rejoice
in the comfort of these words that I
bequeath to you. I would have you become
more than just a semicolon in an operating
system. Perhaps your beauty would
be better memorialized if you were to become
a minimize button on a spreadsheet.
That is my wish for you.
That, and a pure, elegiac silence
that we might admire.
If I painted a picture of you
I think I’d call it Daniel and his Favorite Cigarette
and I’d delay passing the sugar
because you couldn’t wait four more seconds
for your daughter to finish her story.
I would buy all of the newspapers in town
with the crummy headline Fauster & Brown
Up in Sales for 3rd Week Straight
and burn them
all the way through to the sports section
just to watch your favorite team’s numbers
go up in flames. I would rewrite
all those Father’s Day cards, remove the empty seat
in the third row on the left from my poetry reading
that I had reserved, stop putting new batteries
in the remote when you complains. But of course

I won’t. I’ll just make a scene at Sunday brunch
after we finish saying prayers to my dead big brother
at his grave, that dash like a tattoo on my bones—
Yes, Dad, I could have worn a tie
but I like the fact that I still smell like yesterday
cause I know my brother will never know
the scent of tomorrow. I will only curse
between sips of coffee and I’ll stroke my sisters hair
so she knows at least someone has been listening
these past ten years.
Someone once told you,
“Boys don’t cry.”
And for a while,
you believed them.

But like a flower,
kissed by the sun
and nurtured by the rain,
you opened yourself to the world.

And the world can be harsh.
Cloudy days can be cruel.
But if you wait for the sun,
I promise it will come back.

Your empathy may destroy you,
but that’s the price you must pay
to feel happiness and love
as deeply as you do.

And they will tell you,
“You are weak.”
But darling,
you are not weak.

And they will tell you
“You are less than.”
But darling,
you are more.

Boy who cries, you are beautiful.
But they will tell you
you are not.

Don’t listen.
 Apr 2015 David Adam Johnson
XIII
I try to appreciate yours,
but you won't listen to mine.
Un-perks of being polar opposites.
Some parents cry for the ones who are gone.
And others cry for the ones who are still with them...
i've really messed up
my whole life now f
                                    a
                         ­              l
                                         t
                                           e
                                             ring
slowly   each moment pushed
on my heart   a   l i t t l e  h e a v i e r

waiting for it to ...BURST...
and blow us all    p
                             U
                          ^^^^
i just don't know what could've been done+

preventing a storm :
only works when you know
it's going to come, coME, COME!
-not- when you're in the eye

tOo   tOnGuE     tIeD to speak
and just to hürt to try


ive gr0WN accustomed to
        u  m
the l        p    in the throat
the damming of ~water~ behind eyelids                                          f  c
the quivering of my reddened  a  e
and the knifē through the back to my heart

isn't it a shhhhhhame when pain is so common                         B O
and we learn HOW to T  T
                                        L  E   it up       y
and where to store it so                      a
nobody se•es                                    w
                 only   ..   to be hiding it a
from those who gave you heartbreak
                         $         !
and still they act surprised,
                   and condemn you
                   *  *   *   *             tops
when you    POP    off the ^^^
and DrrrüNK enLY g..g..guzzled them all
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