Poetry hurts.
It hurts to look at, hurts to read, because
it digs into the muscle fiber of your heart and burns its way
marking a fixed tattoo in your bone marrow
tearing through your brain material and ******* you dry.
It requires you to latch into the throttle of the soul and feel the pain
and joy
of everything you experience.
No, there is no escape-
explore your pain, stay there, fully enjoy the beauty and the frightening
love of this terribly glorious world.
Books don't hurt,
they placate. They are the balm on your poetry-burns,
allow you to view your pain objectively, to quietly observe
from a peaceful, magical
faraway land where pain doesn't matter
and that roller coaster is just a funny backdrop instead of
the vehicle in which you fall in love and lose your innocence
in the same run.
Books are the numbing, the morphine
to allow you to fall into an enchanted sleep.

We all need books and poetry at different times- to each his own-
but for my own part,

I prefer poetry.

I would like to formally apologize
for the size of my lungs
because they will never be
as expansive as my love
or as loud as my voice
longs to be as heard
or as tumultuous as my passion
rumbles in need of parallel composition

and I just want to say sorry
that I dream to donate
every cubic inch of air
that my tiny chest can or rather cannot hold and breathe it into you
in attempt to make you whole again instead of the ghostly thin form
you hold above my head nowadays
but today is Sunday
and my hands are dry and cracking
from the Friday on which
I finally admitted to myself
that my lack of air is exactly the reason why you don't search me out
for respiration even when you're
grasping and gasping
out of suffocating solitude

this apology is spelled out in sighs
those breaths you told me to hold in
youthfully long exhales
I promised you I would never pick up a cigarette once you started chain smoking
I'm choking in this secondhand smoke
let me fall through your fingers like ashes
the golden spark has died
put out my flame with your heel
stamp it into your coffin so the world doesnt catch fire
deprive it of oxygen
tell it youre sorry for not wrapping your hands around its neck before now

tell it you're sorry that sometimes I find myself becoming angry at the parchment crumpling between my palms because the FRAILTY OF MY HANDS WONT COMPLY WITH THE HUNGER FOR EXPLANATION AND EXPLOITATION OF MY BRAIN AND MAYBE ITS THAT IMMATURE NEED FOR OXYGEN AGAIN BUT I HEAR MYSELF CRYING OUT FOR RELEASE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT NOT BECAUSE YOURE HOLDING ME AT THIS PRECARIOUS EDGE BUT BECAUSE YOU CHOOSE TO NEVER TIP ME OVER.
(a sharp intake of breath)


(exhale)


I can't breathe.
I think I might be allergic to you.
I think you might be bad for my health.

there are three thousand miles between your sandy shores of ironically ****** air and my rainy lakes of needles. you'd think the contrary.

you lost your ashtray and replaced it with my inhaler.

I would like to formally apologize
for the size of my lungs
because they will never be
as expansive as your love
or as loud as your voice
longs to be as heard
or as tumultuous as your passion
rumbles in need of parallel composition

we are both still learning to breathe

i am the right knee
that steps first
and hits gravel
embracing the brute pain
our world has acclimated us to
because they said injury is

inevitable

while you are the left
that although remains flawless
from lack of exposure
heals
slower
and is categorized with

the weak

                                             we belong to the same body

we both work in the postal service
but neither one of us
has ever sent a single love letter
maybe it's the drill of the job
maybe its the grind of the machines
or the clack of the keyboards
grind turns to a drone
and i look around to what we thought
were industrialized patents
were actually what we had once considered our friends
was that where they disappeared to?
instead of quitting the dead end
i had assumed too fearful to follow the leap
they hid away in mail bins and P.O. boxes
i thought i was alone
maybe i was
maybe they really did leave
their souls gone
with empty shells of bodies
remnants of what once was
yes
i am still alone
those who i knew have fled the building
in search of a more meaningful existence
winding in up in god knows where
anywhere but here
these gluttonous pantomimes only accept hopefuls
midlife crises who leap
at the opportunity for promotion
like increasing payroll would reduce their age
same as the twenty five year old liberal art grads who need a filler
to help pay rent while they work
on what will collectively become hundreds of thousands of volumes unpublished
here i stand
twenty eight years old
and strip off my badge
as it falls to the floor
i walk out the door
say hello to the next boarding train
(last stop your hometown)
and goodbye to the dead end road.