Oh man,
Auden was right.
I don’t want the stars that work in dot to dot connections to make your bone structure anymore.
Put them out.
Dismantle the sun like every flat pack piece you ever bought and found something wrong with.
Take it back.
Oh Gemini,
You were never as warm as the month you were born into.
Find the receipts of faded love letters and take it all back.

Take me back to when Achilles was the most glorious **** up the world had ever known.
I reckon we could give him his money’s worth.
I’ve been running on cursed soles for years now
And you cannot heel this.
Feet like beat up peaches and boots laced up too tight,
Now all the blood has rushed to somewhere I can’t keep up with.

This ain’t no Greek tragedy.
This is just a messed up human telling another
That sometimes men are right
And love doesn’t last forever
But if you hold him tight
Enough
Maybe you don’t need to return each other.

1) Your heart is so entwined into mine that I'm not sure if it hurts you or me when I pry it out with a crowbar and leave it on your windshield.

2) You're letting boys ****** you sweaty in your backseat and I just want anyone to write about me the way all my blank pages scream about you.

3) I've always been one to root for the underdog and baby we're a million to one shot.

4) You're the Dragon and the Damsel and I'm not sure what to do.

5) You're the draft I've been writing on for months. Art is never finished.

6) I'm wicked and I'm proud, just like every fallen angel.

7) That's not a light at the end of the tunnel. It's your eyes and I think I always knew it was.

8) There is no salvation. There is no damnation. There's only you.

9) And I'm sitting outside the Pearly Gates, cigarette perched in my lips like a crow.

10) Or maybe I'm sitting on the bank of the river Styx, I'm not much of a cartographer and Dante doesn't have time for fools like me.

11) My poetry is a lip-synched prayer and my goddess has turned a deaf ear to them.

12) I was replaced by we and me by us and you wonder why I don't know who I am when you're gone.
12b) You wonder why we don't know who we are when you're gone.

This is the day I forget the sound of your voice.
For it no longer echoes in my ears, in my fingers,
in my tongue. These endless digits fallen instantaneously
numb like a local anesthetic or winter basement nights
alone in the dark.

This is the day I forget the sound of your voice.
It's melodic tones and overtures, the way it wraps
around words like my hands around your curves.

This is the day I forget the sound of your voice.
And how I fed on it like the word of God.

This is the day I forget the sound of your voice.

this is a poem about how you sleep,
how your body grew cold like a corpse in a mortuary.
how it felt wrong to reach out and touch you.
did you know that you turned away from me
every time i tried to face you?
did you do it on purpose?
maybe you were afraid i would be able to see
you were dreaming of her,
that i would read it on your face.
lines by your mouth like obituary,
like roadmap, her bedroom,
the destination, mine, a pitstop.
loving you was like attending a funeral service for myself
and sitting in the front row. no.
loving you was like watching you pick out a casket
and call it practice. ****.
i know how sensitive you are about death.
i know it still hurts.
i know how everything hurts.
i am sorry for just being another thing that hurts.
i think i'm afraid to let you forget that you used to want me.
like if i can somehow dig deep enough,
wound you into remembering me.
i keep weapons-grade nostalgia in my back pocket
for the days i can feel myself slipping from your consciousness.  
i was born with scar tissue where skin should've been.
but this isn't about me.
this is about the way you sleep
like you're waiting for someone to close the lid,
cover you in dirt, and read a psalm.
this is about the way i tried to sing your pieces back together,
and the way my voice gives out
when i read the things you write for anyone other than me.
lover, friend, stranger,
i just wanted to show you how to love your darker parts.
i never meant to become one.
i am so ******* selfish.
but i swear i am trying to unlearn the steps.
and you used to think my two left feet were charming.
i am out of time in more ways than one.
i keep stepping on your toes.
i can't seem to stop tripping you up,
hoping that you'll fall back into whatever this was.

- m.f.

when i feel the dull burn of a car window rolled down in 50 degree weather, when i am showing someone else my favorite books and films, when a boy is holding one hand and a cigarette is holding my other, i will think of someone who tried to better themselves and that it's okay if it isn't because of me.

when i approach my first day of college and there is a hand held out to me in an attempt to meet my acquaintance or a nerve-calming crack at the teacher by an upper classman, i will take that as an invitation to get right what i didn't in high school.

when i find a friend that will take me to the hottest parties a suburban chemical factory can hold, but who won't sit outside and wait the 40 seconds i have left of my cigarette to keep me company, i will gently decline and decide that i deserve better.

when i hear a sound as demanding as a freight train cutting slowly through the calm small-town winter night, i will think of the conversations between me and an old dear friend, on a front porch lit by a giant christmas star. i will smile fondly and choke back the nostalgia.

when i think of my adventures through the year 2014, although achingly transient, i owe it to myself not to pull my hair over what could have been, but instead pull my arms around the people who deserve it, and hug a little tighter, love a little harder, and demand a lot better.

my brain is dousing itself with kerosene, tempting thoughts taking
form of unlit matches,
yet to spark
how do i learn the art of
living under extradited energy of this fire?
the elementals of exhaustion, oh,
how it rests as the black hole in the back
of your head.
it smells like last spring break, you know,
crazed.
i began carving
myself into something other,
you began eating less and
vomiting more.  
i wanted to believe in god,
waking up at 12pm on a sunday to
slug the nearest bottle of red, maybe,
it'll get me closer, maybe,
maybe i'll taste him
i'll become so numb i'll start to believe
i'm living for a purpose,
that theres some drawn-up reason for
my little existence,
opening old wounds or
leaving without closing any doors, any at all,
touching stove tops,
praying to 'anyone' that this is already hell, that this has
gotta be the worse, this can't
get worse,
punching brick walls to break knuckles, only to watch poems fall out,
heaving at the sight of anything and
laughing when remembering everyone leaves, even 'dad,'
shaking hands with the reflection in the mirror, the person you don't want to be, the person you're claiming 'too toxic,'
the person you're afraid to see again

One for my shaking hands and the nail in the coffin
I haven’t been the same since then and I think I buried too much of myself with you
Two for the year we spent together without the sun
My darling Love I was not meant to be kept between four walls
Your lips were not enough to sustain me
And your hands could not hold tight enough
But in some ways I think I’m still there with you
Three for the hollow eyes you turned out to be
I gave you too much and lost what little you gave me
Does happiness still elude you when you sit still for too long
Or are you content when you feel his arm around you
Four for the parking lot that I know I’ll never forget
I don’t feel your hand in mine anymore
The taste of your lips doesn’t linger like it did
Your voice is no longer clear in my ears
I don’t remember what its like to hold you
And that scares me more than anything
Five for the disconnect
I lose something in every dream I have now
Because its all I can honestly remember
*~W.C.