Don't fall in love with a girl who reads.
The girl who feels everything, who dreams, who writes..

Fall in love with the girl you find in a bar. Find her in the squall of smoke and sweat of an upscale nightclub. Make sure she doesn't mix her coffee with bourbon. Love the one shooting tequila straight from a cheap, half-empty bottle. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure it lingers a little too long. Use pickup lines and entertain her with meaningless slurs from a long day and mistakes you know are about to be made. Take her outside and kiss her in the rain because you saw it in a film. Comment on its silliness.

Pull her into a tolerable relationship. Let the months pass by without remark. Then let years pass by unnoticed. Talk about nothing of significance and retreat into it when the air grows stale and the evenings become long. Fight about how the shower curtain needs to be kept closed. Propose a little later because you realize you'd have wasted so much time otherwise. Take her to a restaurant that wreaks of marinara sauce and sheepishly ask the waiter to bring a bottle of expensive champagne. Offer up a modest ring and don't become too concerned if you feel nothing of sincerity or commitment. But fake it, ******* it.

Do these things. Because a life lived in purgatory is better than one lived in hell. She will make it hell. I'm begging you, stay away from the one who reads. Who laughs or cries when she makes love. Who can neatly fold her spirit and spin it into prose and poetry. If she loves poetry, run away. Don't dare to look back. She is to be left alone. Dangerous little smiles should make you shake. Do not smile back.

Do not fall in love with a girl who thinks. Who is made up of magic and knows herself. Do not love the one who knows how to disappear inside of a book or a poem or a painting. If she spends any more than a few seconds looking into the eyes of a sinner, get out of there.

Don't fall in love with the girl who is interested in politics, who feels disease in injustices. Don't love the one who is intense, who is lucid and charismatic. Stay away from the one who has any sense of ambition, of rebellion, or even the smallest hint of wonder in her eyes. Be cautious of the ones who can't live without music. If she can draw, quit, and quit fast.

A girl who reads is one who knows herself; who is sure. She is educated and she is fire inside a bottle of rye. The girl who reads is one who is comfortable with goodbyes. Think about it: she's read millions of novels and each one ends. Most end with the death of her favorite character. They make her think. And she flies through the pages like they are wet wine on collarbones. And she is okay with each and every ending. Sure, she might cry, but she'll wipe her face and pick up another book. Just to do it all over again. Remember this if she ever says her favorite book is you.

She is a romantic and how can you match up to the princes and heroes in her books? She knows nothing else. You can't love her the way those characters could if they were to take shape. She holds a vocabulary that lays claim to her ability to distinguish between the specious and the soulless. She holds rhetoric hands that turn black streaks into the books she loves so deeply. She deserves a man who can hold her hand the way she holds her books. Someone who can write her notes and hide them in her lunch box. Can you write in cursive the way she can?

Please, don't fall in love with a girl who reads. Because a girl like that, you never come back from.

Heartwrenched, abominable,
a tear in the fabric of self.
The tapestry stained, bloodied
with emotions I did not ask for
but you have provided.

Oh great goddess, beauty divine,
why have you forsaken me?
Parting the heavens after your storm
to cast down a ray of temptation,
a cloud of splendid serenity
to rest and rise up upon into your paradise.

Ah, the sight of you conjures feelings of salvation,
a relinquishing of one's self into the other.
A soul, an essence, a being
that I have become entranced by.
An insatiable hunger to consume
every thought, no matter how trivial,
for it is a realm I thought too foreign
to exist outside my own self.

Enraptured, I hang on to every breath you speak.
Like an endless supply of enlightenment,
a serene brook of beauty flows from your lips.
And I recite a prayer under my breath,
whispering to the cosmos, that a mortal man like I
can capture your attention even for a moment,
for I can spend a lifetime in that single second.

And by some miracle it came true!
Granted a chance to court Aphrodite herself.
But now I am burdened, my dear
by your receiving of my existence,
for I know I am not worthy of your grace.
And my glimpse into your beautiful tenderness
has rendered me hopeless.

Mourning my own incompetence,
my inability to offer you something more.
Burying short lived dreams of perfection.
Everything I have wished for and more
in my grasp yet so far away.

You personify the bloom of life in all its beauty.
And I, the epitome of a withering fool,
with hands too rough to hold you near,
shall only sing my song to you
for its all I have to give.

The melodious thunk
of Thelonious Monk.
Nobody ever played
the piano that way
before or since
nobody ever imagined music
that way
before or since.

It took a while
for the audience to get it.
Longer for the critics.

And the Poor Man -
all he wanted was a
hit record.

His wayward mind
took him in difficult directions.
Left him with flint on his tongue
a fever on his brain.
No matter to the music, though.

So take it any way you like -
straight, no chaser.
Or after midnight.
Doesn't matter
the time and place
the drinks they're serving.

Not in this smoky little club  
practically sitting with the band.
Know what I mean?
Music like this
might once have been heard
on a planet
spinning in some wild ellipse around
Alpha Centauri.
But never here.
Never now.

So sit back and enjoy!
That's what I'm doing -
swinging slowly.
Join me, friends.

Book your flight to
my home town.
Bring your seven-cornered syncopation hat,
your saxophone or any other
musical instruments you possess.
You can sleep in a tent
beneath the fir trees
in my backyard
once the guest room is full.

And together
we can search for
the mystic connections
between interstellar music
poetry
truth
and love.

a little rich
cascade
in free fall  

across stones
not yet slippery
of moss

water in
communion
with the being

a forest
sprouted
within

making
branches
of arms  

trunk
of
torso

fruit
of the
heart

now
skipping
over and on

astride
like a
creature

barefoot
over jagged
stone

a green silken
gurgle
demon sky...

The sandman eludes me...

The hours find me wakeful.

My lungs ingests fatuity
while my heart harbours entropy.

Sleep never comes soon
when thoughts dishevelled,
amass to engulf the twilight moon.

To a point where fatigue has taken me...
But still I lay wakeful.

Awaiting the sandman's return,
with the promise of sanctuary.