You fall out of love like a habit.
Nobody told you that even when they say
'there are no wrong answers',
there's always one that rings all the wrong bells.
You say, 'Maybe strawberry ice cream is my favourite',
and suddenly alarms go off in his head
'How? What? Nobody likes strawberry icecream!
This one is defective! Return to Sender!'

This one is defective.
You were mass produced
on a supply line for antsy, lonely nineteen-year olds.
This was their best year yet; the whole world is aching
but we're sorry to inform you but
Models made after 1995 are no longer supported.

To the scrapyard, then.
You fall and tumble and crawl out of love
like it's out to get you.
Like it's got its teeth in you,
nails tearing into flesh,
holding your ankles and begging you
to stay.

Your story is in Spanish:
a blind man visits, eats, drinks, smokes
and searches your face with his fingers after dinner.

To feel someone's eyes upon you, you say,
is a metaphor. To feel someone's fingers
on your eyelids is also a metaphor
for truth.

Sometimes I tunnel to know how deep the clay begins,
to know "cathedral" in Spanish
to know poetry in S = KlnW
to know where I'm alone.

When you say, "Dádivas ablandan peñas," and hand me a wild cut twine, taut with a kite, I see your scarred fingers  and know

your gift is not a kite, wise with wind
but the tunnel you dug

and the stone in my hand crumbles

The representative from Ohio
wipes his *** with Jose’s brown
palms after a bout of verbal defecation.
Luckily, Jose’s food truck houses

a small sink in the corner where
he can wash his hands in between
baskets of chorizo prepared
for rich politicians.

Sometimes Jose scrubs so hard dream flakes
rub off of his skin and he throws them
into the wastebasket to be picked
up by the sanitation workers who

eagerly jump like frogs in orange vests
into the waste of Americana. When
the Representative stops by for
a plate of carne asada, Jose’s

dream specks pepper the beef
and his salty sweat flavors
the inside of the burrito. He grills
the onions and green peppers with

a dash of minimum wage and
boils the rice in a mixture of blood
and pieces of his heritage.
He serves the meal in a white Styrofoam

tray and drizzles it with cheese flowing
from an open wound. The receipt is an unpaid
medical bill, the drink an icy reminder
of his future sipped through a straw.

The nightly news tells Jose
the Representative is bedridden
with a stomach infection. He
complains his insides feel like

a million ***** feet kicking the lining,
like unheard mouths with rows of
sharp teeth gnawing at the liver.
Jose to the tv: tonight we’re not starving.

In a world where natural tendency
And temptation is feared
But hatred and ignorance
Make us comfortable
We that love and we that see
Are crushed by responsibility.

with that said,
let's **** **** up
You want us to lose our minds
because we're just kids
Us kids
have a story
a story beyond Slenderman and Batman.
We live
we breathe
we abide by society,
but no one expects us
to fight back
I'm a 15 year old kid,
but I hold much more than *silence

Maybe we thought we were ironic.

Poor kids

throwing money on train tracks

to watch it flatten,

lose all value.

Sick kids

driving too fast and too far.

Tired kids

staying out too late.

Kids.

Talking through the hard parts.

The bad bits.

The most painful days.

We lived them all.

We were kids.

We are the strangers we were meant to be.
We are lost, we are cold, but never free.
How do we escape this dark unfriendly town,
streets they are so empty, streets they are so brown.
As we make our way through life,
we try to bury all the strife.
We turn around the bend, losing every good old friend
now we know we can't pretend that this moment is now the end.