The devil has an angelic grin
As he holds your hand in secret
And whispers sweet little nothings in your ear.
The devil has perfect skin, striking eyes,
And a jaw that could have cut
Your wrists better than you will ever have.
The devil will write you poems
And speak to you in rhymes,
Fleeting little words,
Just to keep you from breaking apart
So he can keep playing
With your already aching heart.
The devil will come
When you are at your lowest.
He will come
with an outsteretched hand
Promising you heaven on earth
But, he will let go of you
right before you reach the top.

So you pull yourself up
like what humans do
in the face of adversity,
And when
you are on your own way to heaven,
Only then shall you meet your angel

Your angel will not have wings
To whisk you off your feet
And bring you to dazzling sights,
But he will have a smile
Brighter
And more beautiful
Than any scenery.
Your angel will not look how you imagined him to be
all chiseled up and perfect like a Greek statue
But you will not be able to look away
From that crooked smile
Nor tear your hands away
From those coarsely cut curls.
Your heart will be full of his love
And you will feel safe
Perhaps
Even feel heaven on earth

when i was younger, this boy used to tease me about my skin color;
how much it resembles coal,
and how it makes me look like an Aeta,
and how they can't see me in the dark,
but even before that i was insecure.
because when people bothered to look at me,
they'd only see ebony
and to them it was synonymous with ugly and *****.

but i don't blame them.

they're just caught in the current of colonialism
when we measured one’s status through the hue of their skin
and we followed.
we followed their discrimination of the ones whose skin didn't look like the exact duplicate of ivory and marshmallow.
we followed their system of supremacy of putting the lighter ones up in the stars to match whiteness with brightness.
we followed their standards of beauty which just happened to be the exact ******* opposite of our majority.

now our country is driven mad
by the idea of whitening your skin
until your heritage is nowhere to be seen;  
it has been scrubbed off by papaya soap,
masked by glutathione
and devalued by insults.
but hey,
who cares about heritage if you look like that European actress?
who cares about culture when you could pass off as an American?
who cares about natural brown when synthetic white wears the crown?

When I was young,
I had long curly hair
That cascaded down my back
Like an ominous waterfall;
So dark and thick, it seemed to go on forever.
But, when I was in school, it was always *******.
It was a challenge for my mother to tame it with a brush
And keep it in the confines of a bun.
She said it was to keep my hair
from getting to my and others’ faces.
But some people still managed to make me feel bad for having such “unruly” hair
when the most it’s been exposed is when I take out my hair tie just to tie it back up again.
For years I tried to straighten it;
Hair rebonding every year,
Straightening iron ever morning,
Damaged hair and damaged pride every day.

They say a woman’s hair is her crown;
She must wear it with her chin up
And flaunt it unabashedly.
This is to the girls who do.
This is to the girls who dye their hair magnificent colors
To match their colorful personalities.
This is to the girls who cut their own hair
Because hair salons charge so much for a trim.
This is to the girls who shave all their hair for charity
Or for support of the girls in chemotherapy.
But this is also for the girls in chemotherapy,
Who are still thriving even though they’re suffering.
This is also to the girls whose hair are being treated like an anomaly,
Their braids being pulled and afros being patted.
This is also to the girls who can’t land a job
Because their skills were degraded by their “unprofessional” hair.

A woman’s hair is her crown
But a queen does not need a crown.
A queen is not just some girl with a shiny thing on her head.
A queen is a figure of power, compassion and grace.
She wears the crown, not the other way around.

The best poems are all about
loss and pain and suffering.
It feels more natural to write a poem
about a long lost memory,
Or a love that never worked.

Poets aren't allowed to be happy.
They’d run out of material to write about.

The words
content and happy
in the same sentence as the word
I'm,
feels like your tongue
never sitting right in your mouth,
like teeth getting in the way
when making out
like an itchy throat,
not going away even after coughing a fit.

The phrases
You are and my boyfriend
can't be a real sentence
like how
unicorns and fairytales
don't exist.
They just feel like
two jigsaw pieces
from different parts of the puzzle
forced to sit beside each other.

The word love
just doesn’t resonate
with the beat of my heart.
Maybe because
my heart stopped beating
a long time ago
and my brain had to carry the workload
so I think twice as much as I should
synonyms?
I overthink.

I may be the only poet
who doesn’t want to be happy;
a ******* clinging to heartbreak,
and loss and pain and suffering.
because it’s easier to let heartbreak
wrap myself in its familiar arms
than to experience an adventure
with happiness wrapped in mine.

Imagine
Perfectly normal house
Perfectly normal girl
Perfectly healthy body
Chaotic mind.
Her thoughts
As loud as waves
Clashing on rocks.
Yet a voice
So quiet
Like a breeze
Through palm trees.

take me back a month ago;
I'll pretend I don't have to go back home.
I'll pretend I don't have a return ticket
as long as I get to stay a bit,
just a bit...longer
because, there, people were nicer!
I stood a little taller!
The air was cleaner
because you weren't in the radar

I basked in the glory or a lion with a fish tail.
I walked down pavements that always looked freshly painted.
I passed people who didn't look like me
nor looked at me.
There was absolutely nothing there
that could have reminded me of thee but...
me.

I chose to see you in the boat on top of a building
because you said we'd sail through the clouds
to catch each others dreams together.
I chose to see you in train stations
where I thought we'd say goodbye
rather than part with a short reply.

oh, take me back to that city
where I can be reminded of you
without you.

Flower petals and confetti litter the ground.
Balloons held up by your friends.
Curious passersby gathering around.
You,being pushed towards the center of attention.
You, alone, in the middle of it all.
His friends wearing letters on their shirts,
Shuffling to spell out-

“will you marry me?”
It flashes on the jumbotron
In lieu of the kiss cam.
Fans hooting everywhere
“Say yes! Say yes!”, they scream
As he kneels on that popcorn and soda littered floor
And repeats-

“will you marry me?”
He says as his now sister-in-law gives you her bouquet.
His and everyone else’s eyes are on you.
Even though it’s his brother’s wedding’s reception,
he still managed to capture all the attention
Towards the two of you.

His eyes are brimming with tears
and glistening like the ring he’s holding.
He loves you. So much.
You love him,too. You know you do.
But how do you say I love you and no at the same time.
“I love you but, no.”
That doesn’t seem right.
So you stay on the middle ground and say
“I’ll have to think about it.”

The hooting turns to whispers
The tears on your boyfriend’s eyes come falling down
as he tucks the ring back in his pockets.
Your feet cemented to the ground
As people look at you as if you’re the strangest thing
to have ever existed.
And you may as well be.
No one says no to proposals.
It’s considered rude to reject such a thoughtful gesture.
But to whom is it being thoughtful of
Because it sure as hell isn’t of you
Since you’re the one who’s being viewed as a villain
But you have to remember that you’re not.

You are not a villain for saying no.
You are not the bad guy for not being ready.
Your decision is valid
And if he leaves you
Or makes a villain out of you
for being honest,
Then you were right to reject that ring.

You stuck to me
Like coffee stains on my shirt and
Like paint under my fingernails;
I could romanticize your pressence as much as I want
But the truth is that you are nothing but filth.

I wanted to wash you and
All the memories we've made
But I just can't seem to scrub you away.
I tried and tried and tried
Until my eyes were red
Until my knuckles were bruised
Until I sank to my bed
Until I drowned in *****
Until my body was dead.

But, it was too late to wash off the filth and dust
That you made me believe, were glitter and fluff
For you have seeped into the deepest crevices of my life
To spread your virus of lovely lies.

You made me think that bacteria was dopamine
And this disease was love.

I dream of a lot of scary things
I dream about being chased by murderers
and being haunted by ghosts.
One time I dreamt about us
and what couldv’e been
if only we had been stronger
and if only we had trust.
It was the scariest dream of all

In Greek mythology, the god of love, Cupid,
is the counterpart of Thanatos, the god of death.
You’re probably thinking, that’s an odd pair.
The Greeks were all about odd pairs.
Are you really surprised?
Because love is contentment and happiness.
Whereas death,
Well, no one really wants to talk about that.
But these obviously contradictory themes
Are more similar than we think.
One, At some point we’re gonna experience either.
Two, you don’t want to experience either on your own.
No one wants to die alone
Nor have unrequited love.
And three, the sensations of both are eerily similar.
Now I know why you take my breath away
And why my heart palpitates
whenever I see you;
The same sensations that someone gets
When they’re having a cardiac arrest.
Falling in love is like being on the precipice of death
Maybe that’s why they call it “falling” in love
Because when you fall from something,
You will splat on the ground,
With your insides out there for someone to see
And you’re wondering
if they like what they see.

You put your lips on mine,
Breathing out
Whispering sweet nothings
to supply me with life
You put both hands on my chest
My *******
My whole body being caressed
As if to restart my defunct heart.
1 missisipi
2 missisipi
I love you missisipi
I dont wanna lose you missisipi
I'm sorry missisipi
We can still be friends missisipi
Caress turned to oppress

Every breath you released with those words;
You think will revive whatever died between us
You "saved" me because you think i was drowning
But I jumped in the water and stayed there for longer than 30 seconds
Just to see what it would feel like
To knock out all the air, all the life, of which you supplied me.
And, hell, I've never felt more alive.

I am a lover of all things dark and brooding
the somber ambiance, for me, is quite soothing            
don't get me wrong, it's not all black and white;
my opinions and clothes alike.

I've actually come to like mustard yellow
And would totally rock a look that's pastel and mellow.
But this section of the spectrum
That will never have my affection
Is the color orange;
I cant even rhyme it with anything.
                                      
Red and yellow looked daunting at first;
Each color, the embodiment of an ouburst.
Wearing these colors that are so luminscent
To appear as though my soul is effervescent,
To appear as though i am an image of thrill;
Faking it 'til I make it, if you will.
Contrastingly, its combination's thrill and effervescence
Is rather shrill and of terrible essence

There's not much that I can compare it to
Other than your tangerine-scented shampoo
And falling leaves in autumn:
Like how I fall when you hum.
Seemingly soft sincerities
Have become dazing disparities.
What was once easy on my eyes
Now is a hue that I despise.

I have since moved on from the fact
that you and I aren’t meant to be
But that wont bring back
the two years you stole from me.

On a rainy day, we agreed to meet.
You said we’d clear things up,
to simmer down the heat
and break down the emotional buildup.
Yet you had the audacity to make me wait
Maybe you did that on purpose
or that was just fate.
But how dare you take advantage of my love?
And, now,
how dare you take advantage of my presence?

I hold on to your mistake
the way you never held on for us
Or even for me.
Because, now, I can really hate you
Rather than hate you
just because you didn’t love me .

As a child, I often imagined us as a royal family;
Dad as the king,
Mom as the queen,
And Myself as the princess.
Within our humble little castle,
You taught me how to be kind but resilient;
To be graceful but firm;
To respect other people and myself;
To love people,
Especially myself.
You have raised me as best as you could

But, a crisis swept over our kingdom
adolescence,
they called it.
It affected all the children in the land,
Making them even more rambunctious than usual.
They became irritated
and isolated themselves,
all the while their innocence fading.
Of course, it affected your little princess,
And you didn’t know what to do.

Dear Mom and Dad,
I’m telling you not to worry.
This is not a crisis but a part of life.
When I slam my bedroom door shut,
After we’d just fought,
That doesn’t mean I hate you.
My hormones are just not as calm as they used to be.
Be patient.
I’m not mad at you
For telling me to sit up straight
Or mind my manners at dinner
Or be independent.
I know you are just molding me
To become the person you’ve always envisioned;
You just want me to be more like you.

But, mom, dad,
I am my own person.
I have my own set of personalities and traits
A set of which you have inspired,
Not provided.
You have inspired me to become
A strong woman
But, I have to do it my way now.
You can’t shield me from the terrors of the world forever.
You have to let me out of my tower
Because I can slay my own dragons
and unfaithful princes.
I am not your little girl anymore
But I am still your princess
And you still rule my world.

Falling in love is like
being on
the precipice
of death.
Maybe thats why
they call it falling
in love
because when you
fall,
you don't know
whether you'll survive
or
you'll splat on the ground
and break all your bones.