It was four o'clock in the morning. Robert wondered why his name was Robert. He decided to get rid of the "Bert" because it was the name of a Sesame Street character or the name of a ******* in Tempe, Arizona. Then again, he thought, "Hey, just Rob makes me sound like I change tires for a living or that I work out at a gym that discriminates fat people and blacks." Rob or Robert took a second to evaluate his last thought and if thinking "and blacks" made him a racist person.

Robert sat on a bench and wondered if the woman beside him was expecting Forest Gump-esque wisdom.

Robert thought of a friend he had in grade eight, named Alexander. He thought of how Alexander had a glass eye. Robert wondered how Alexander had a glass eye but could not remember or did not know why Alexander had a glass eye. Robert, then, concluded that sometimes he will not know something and how that is okay because most people don't know anything--it's a collection of approximates that stay in our heads, he thought. Robert asked himself if his last thought made him intelligent or dumb and pretentious. Robert decided that he did not know. How meta, he thought. Robert, then, decided to stop using the word "meta" so much, because it made him feel like a professor with bitterness and something to prove.

Robert watched his sister struggle with an eating disorder. She was in a hospital bed, with an IV in her arm. Robert did not know if he would struggle with anything as hard as his sister struggled with anorexia. Robert, then, had intense but fleeting anger at every person that bragged about being anorexic or made it seem cool.

Robert sat on his toilet and wondered what his true identity was and what his true nature was. He wondered what was inherent and what was synthetic. Robert, then, wondered if a synthetic personality was inherent. Robert asked himself if he was a good person. He wasn't sure if sitting on the toilet, in his grandmother's house, and ******* to interracial ebony teen ****, on his iPhone, made him a good person or not. His concerns soon past, though, as soon as Lauren started to **** the pizza guy's white ****.

Robert walked down the street and was contemplating some of the issues that plagued his ****-infested mind, while he was on the toilet. Robert saw a girl running from a guy. Robert asked himself if he was a hero or inherently good. Robert, then, concluded that he was inherently a coward, since he did nothing and hoped that somebody else would save her.

Robert didn't meet a girl and knew that no one would write prose about his meeting a girl and their mutual love for one another. Robert was eating a steak sub, while thinking this.

Robert returned to the hospital, to pick up his sister. On the way home, his sister talked about how attractive her nurse was. Robert asked, "What did he look like?" His sister, then, said, "It wasn't a he. My nurse was a girl." Robert was okay with his sister being attracted to girls, but hoped that she didn't get more than him or more attractive girls than him, because, for some reason, that would make him feel insecure. Robert decided to stop eating so many steak subs and to work out. Robert asked his sister if she wanted to get steak subs. She said, "sure".

Robert was working out in his basement. He heard the sound of retching, upstairs. Robert followed the sound of the vomiting and opened a bathroom door. He saw his sister stick her finger down her throat. He said to his sister, "That isn't anorexia." His sister said, "I know. There's a lot you don't know about me." Robert said, "I'm sorry."

I remember
when growing up
was desired.
We swung our lungs
upwards,
towards the sky,
so we could steal
the air of the
universe's river.

I'd call you on
my parents' red landline.
You'd call me on
a broken cordless phone.
Your father would yell
and I could hear your mother
knock over things
as she was either
running, hiding, or
fighting back.

You don't exist.
You're a figment of my
imagination.
You're a poem,
but I want you to be
a memory that is real
to substitute the ones
I wish were fake.

You don't exist.
Your name is not
Kimberly or June.
Your ears aren't pierced.
We never played games
or shared deep thoughts.
We never talked about
running the **** away.
We didn't grow up together.
We aren't close.
You were never born.

You are just a phantom
stemmed by an unoriginal
imagination. imagination.
imagination. imagination.
But I want you to be real.
Please exist beyond my mind.

In my head,
you confided in me.
In my head,
I wasn't so ******* alone
from ages 6 to 16.
In my head,
you're a phone call away.
I don't want to write a poem
to communicate to you.
Be born. Be born. Be born.

I have so much
I want to share.
I want you to meet
my girlfriend Rachel.
I want you to hear
about how everything
is going well, for once.

Be born. Be born.
Be born. Be born.

The girl and I
were tickled by sea foam,
our ankles wrapped in
diamond studded leeches--
We are the
yellow-bellied *******
in a porcelain nest of water.

Our running is stunted.
Our heels are bouncing
off the beach-face
and we are distracted
by the butterflies
because they look like
flowers floating before
the orange
and purple bled sky.

The girl and I
are in love,
but we laugh at feelings.
There's a polished
wrecking ball
swinging between our
chewed lips.
And we agree
love is for tin birds
in a flame cage.

How she sat there
with movement in her head.
A churning of learning
the ways to get ******
and slaughtered by
other people's
sons and daughters.

And how I sutured a gust
of her brain exhaust
into my chest, into my lungs--
I breathed her like I was
******* the end of a
tailpipe.

Her hands ran like busted tires
as she massaged my temples,
revving her voice,
my ears on her
suicide door lips.

There is no green light
in her red light country.

Random dates.
Random times.
Useless words.
Stupid rhymes.

It's not cool being
less than you can be
so I urge you--
urge you--
to be happy.

Because there was a man
who was a clown
and he danced for the children
as they were being lead
to the gas chamber.
And it was 1943.
And it was
**** Controlled Germany.

The clown wept,
each time the lever
was pulled
and when the children
became silent.

To stop crying,
he told himself
that existence
is just random dates
and random times.
There was no meaning
in reason
and no order
in lines.

All he could do
was all he did know,
and that was to give
happiness
before they'd go.

Everyone sat
criss-cross-applesauce
in our hearts.
Perfume is made
with dead things, right?

I try hard to sound
important,
when I write *******
because
there are bodies
reading this *******.

And bodies grow and wither.
They thrive and survive.
They get married
and die alone.
They die.

To become dead.

Perfume is made
with dead things, right?

When I was little
I played with plastic toy knives
and dragged them across
my brother's throat
saying, "You're dead!
You're dead! You're dead!
I swear, you're dead!"

And we pretended
kool-aid was blood,
letting it drip down
my chin and neck,
down my chest,
past my pec.

I wrecked my bike
and ran for days.
I was stung by bees and swore,
"Nothing could hurt more
than this."

And when I turned twelve,
I learned how to ******* to dreams.
The grip on my skateboard
wouldn't let go of me.
I ollied over plastic bags
and stared at lottery tickets
sleeping in the garbage.

She and I played with fireworks
faster than shooting stars.
We waded in the lake,
being a cliche.
She and I rolled on the grass, naked.
I don't know where she is, now.

I don't know.

If I could shave
your burnt hair from my arms.
And hear the sirens blare
through cross-stitched alarms.
I would give until
the water leaves
the copper cuffed canyons
in my sleeves.
I want to want something
more than what I'd give.
Just to blend into the sky.
You and I.

Part of a mud-caked quilt,
between the city walls
and the tornado path,
*******--not at all.
Because he's a voice
in the crowd.

We used to make paper planes
as flimsy as our confidence.
Nothing ever flew the same,
smothered by the thawing sky.
We counted the seconds
until rain ate their bodies,
"5,6,7,8".

Too afraid to go outside,
mom and dad are gone.
Hovering hips beside
the holes in our walls.
Staring out the window
as foggy breath falls.

Seaweed salad and water
before we sleep.
Thinking about
if the paper graves
are as deep  
as the cheap cliches
in our head.