2 years ago I wished for death
I breathed in pills like they were oxygen
Between the scars and my wrist and the tension in my bones
Nights were infinitely longer than days

6 months ago I fantasized her sweet kiss
Every thought dedicated to the romance
Every decision dedicated to numbness
3 am daydreams of helium tanks and ******

A month ago I drank myself out of consciousness
Until I was no longer forced awake
By the pulling between my temples
As if a void was in the center of my mind

This week my pillow beckoned to me as a long lost lover
Tonight we caressed each other
Tll I drifted into a blissful slumber
But plagued by mares of the the nights to come

our circles of right and wrong,
fractured in absence of fickle zen,
stand now across the sky
diagramed on clouds in venn

and smiling the grey
blobs block the meteors;
it’s love of life that may
chain our bodies in the center

of that shifty airy water space
where waffles are gentrification
and the hands we hold are separation
and its happening everyplace

we go. so to talk and act
separately, is to deny that cloudy venn;
to go where mind is scarcely fact
and establish a dangerous distance

cuz yesterday I meditated
but today I must’ve particulated
cuz  I see we’re one big contradiction
inside love that’s bound to mediation.

friere would say this occupation
is precisely our ontological vocation,
but to subjectify ourselves at the very
center of the venn is to carry

a weight upon the column
of my spinal cord unknown
even to the days
of my very best posture.

yet, your resistance to the slump—
it guides me to listen for the thump
thump of distant drums:
a revolutionary battlecry

through which I extend my hand
to hold yours across the waffled
space which we’ve so ******.
our heartbeat races through my mind.

your lips hung, slightly parted,
as you slept through the morning.

your face was smooth
and your tiny nose ring glinted
in the light that passed through the pine trees
and into our tent.

i stared at you, over there, for a long time
from where i lay in my sleeping bag, over here.

i knew that, just as it happened two years ago
when we lay in the bed at my mother’s house,
having spent the night together for the first time,
your eyes would slowly flicker open to meet mine
and i would somehow have to account
for why my gaze was already fixed on yours.

i prepared a hundred different good-mornings,
some chipper
           (“good morning!”)
and others saddened
           (“hey, good—um… good morning.”)
or only a little bit saddened
           (“hey there. good morning.”)
just to seem more natural even though
they were all still going to be a little bit
too chipper.

but i looked away at just the right moment and you muttered,
in your tired voice,
“how did none of the rain get into the tent?”
so all my preparations were obsolete.

i told my mom tonight,
that we’re no longer whatever we were
and it was only the fourth time i can really remember
tearing up in front of her,
although it surely happened quite frequently
when i was younger. after
scraping a knee, for instance, or
getting scolded by my brother.
the skin on my knee has healed now though,
so i’m thinking i’ll just try
not to be so concerned.
about anything, really.

The rush of gentle wind overwhelms me--
meaning only to propel me,
but instead
it makes me stop.

The thoughts in my mind
nauseate me--
churning and spinning and crashing
along my sides,
Mutinous--
threatening to throw me over.

From wave after wave
of connections unknown
all I have learned is that
I cannot surrender.

i’ve spent the last
six months of my life
dying to die
with no results.
and in that time i’ve
been walking
on a sidewalk that
is crooked and cracked
into some godforsaken
place. through my journeys
i’ve come to rely
on two certainties:
that i will go to bed
unsatisfied and hungry.

and every night is
a rainy one and cats eat
the fur and bones of dogs dead
in the flooded gutters. the grey
monoliths of the city
are always a step away, but
i don’t get any closer.

and if i could give back
all the cigarette ash and whiskey
i’ve drank i’d do it because
i’d be losing blank meaningless
memories, or at least
they mean nothing to me. i can’t
say the same about
those people in the memories.

and i passed the corner
where i sat drunk on the brick
with my friend, smoking
a cigarette and i remember
telling him that it was
going to be alright. i don’t
know if i was lying or if
i didn’t know the truth
but he left.

and i walked by the home
of my first love and the windows
were dark and the cars were
gone from the driveway.

and i found myself in front
of the house of the girl
i loved who didn’t love me
and the air was black, save
for the glare of a lighter through
the rain and i remembered
a dream i had.

This neon world, so lit with colored glow
My midnight wanderings, they reek of you—
So hidden in the air, nowhere to go,
This nebula, it lies, and clouds my view.

You’ve stripped me of my solitude so long
I can’t imagine days without you there
It’s taken my whole life to see, you’re wrong—
My strength depends not on this sick affair.

I can’t be angry, no, for it’s my fault—
I let you shine your beam upon my fears,
Escort me in a red white blue assault
Red light, green—I hate what once I revered.

I cry, I scream, there’s no way to unbind
Illuminate my soul— Please! I am blind.

Stop—
Right there.
Turn your head,
spread your hair

Listen—
that’s the sound of your life,
past you
it passed you
it won and it’s waiting.

Let yourself be seized,
your features locked up in time

Thoughts and dreams—
dust particles escaping
in a flash of false illumination.
Are you startled?
They belong to the universe now

A mistake in the aperture,
a moment interrupting life’s pulse

Turn your head,
spread your hair
adjust your pose
and stretch your smile

What beauty will you etch
on time’s memory?

i don't know
quite how to
do this thing
anymore

its been 5 days
i think
but all
i can wonder
is why

tonight in the
dim light
i wished simply
to sway in the
wind like a tall
tree

to forget
how to talk
so i don't
have to

i'm fine
those words tumble out
of my mouth over and over
again like a record
spinning out of control
down in to a sanctum of
uncontrollable loneliness

i cant make head or tails
up or down
just tumbling down this
hill with no end

my stomach aches
with a diet of straight nicotine
odd scribble of sad poems
cluster the pages then torn and
tossed to oblivion

burned away is my care
(not the fun kind of care
free from the movies)  
more the depressing kind
that just makes all the others sad

we move in circles
passing by what
once used to be part of it all
but now what? now where?