I loved you
and such is the most succulent sorrow
to be written over like one scar upon another,
erased and retold, I can hardly remember
the way your fingers intwined with mine
and settled like the roots of the tree
resting in the front yard of our minds.
The gated iron face was weakening,
left, unattended by our neglect, our
endless longing.
The path was smoothed out for us.
I didn't desire to work in the coal mines
for you,
lungs, black and tender, to hold in
the weight of your laughter and me,
caged,
hummingbird.
So persistent is the exit wound
between two broken ribs.
You would kiss the scar tissue.
Tell me all would be well and I would
weep because how could it ever be so
lovely as it was before my fears rose
to the surface like a bloated porpoise bobbing
with the current and I'd stretch out my arms like I am
declaring allegiance.
To the starlit collisions that illuminate
this fate we were committed to from the start,
to the god I dare to mock:
once I loved you,
and you, I.
Once I lied.

rip love off the wall.
the smoke and the blood
and greasy fingerprints
that some genius copied
onto your own brain
so your double helixes and its
transformation, a chimera that bears
the weight, the demons
you
discover. pallid bones
are trapped within
these jaundice walls,
dusted so thick.
no end and no beginning,
but of life releasing,
splicing,
the presence of another
for the ******* of yours.

I have never been
a believer
in love
from afar.
Distance, not so much
a killer but a destroyer
to unravel the façade
of a lie I regarded as truth.
I will not have you be my destruction.
But there you sit, absent and present.
There is no cavern in my bed, no warmth
to give away your presence, but it’s you I feel
like a bruise
pressed with words never spoken
the grace of your thumb.
It makes the air heavy:
your dissipated scent
the exhale of your cheap cigarettes
the now and then.
If I concentrate hard enough,
squeeze my eyes until they weep
I can almost recite the talks in the night
as the snow fell and I prayed it would
Seal me inside and we could start
some sort of life inside this globe,
this dream
I had
to fly
away.
I have never been a believer
but I’ve always believed in you,
love.

Queen,
I am.
My crown may not adorned with the largest sapphires and the most sparkling diamonds
Silver or gold or rose or platinum
Crookedly a top my head
It may possess bumps and caverns, the ones in my road
No Michelangelo and no Botticelli
Just essentially me, melted down by fire and molded by ambition and brain.
You may doubt and question,
Resurrection of the inquisition
(Do we sit under the Barcelona sky?)
But under the eyes of your God,
I am truthful always
To myself.
a broken promise is a crack in the earth so please keep your feet
Because I promise you
I am a queen and I bow
To nothing
But what I wish

summer is fading
like the cologne on the clothes you left behind
dangling on her like second skin
clinging.
She is but a petal fighting for the sun,
forgetting she is a fragment
a constant
but when plucked you take
inch by inch,
a husk for your filling
until next summer.
complete(ly), destroy(ed).

I breathe
with hands pushing
inside of my chest
independent,
dependently.
y(our) kiss,
crush
I smile (lie)
fighting
crying
you (willdonotwillnot) see
sweat
I am fighting
flying
arms breaking
broken (a token)
It is all.

victory is not always
to score the goal
to stand atop a podium.
victory is
being pinned
to the bed
couch
chair
wherever
suffocated by immeasurable weight
and rolling off the bed
a sack of sinews and synapses
to the floor.
this is victory
one inch
(for a hundred tears
god I've yearned to run as fast)
closer to being free

the drums in my mind lie silent
and thundering static surges like storms
in the night I did not map out or perhaps
I did and it eroded, erased
like the fading smoke of a dream
but I could not dream you and
you and you.
caverns carved over years
and well has run dry
and my hands, they've ceased to bleed.
there is reason in the madness
a framework in the chaos.
you fold me like a ribbon into a bow;
how can a glance make me feel like
air subsequent leaving and entering
my universe shifting and mending
out of my control.
I am free.

I cannot pinpoint the moment I felt you,
Not in me and fleeting and exiting,
But within me, burrowing and thriving
Transcending past superficialities
And sailing, reveling,
Deep into some place I cannot see or reach.
You see, it’s been sleeping for a time now,
That unnamed force that inhabits the place.
But what I can do is pick moments,
Scattered like colorful tacks on a map,
Tracking my movements throughout the city
I borrowed for a few days, imagining
I’d return
Like a spontaneous library book
And back on the shelf, considered momentarily
Then gone again.
I didn’t think I’d bring a fragment home,
Aching for the remaining pieces,
The cathartic peace.

I hope
this is what you
                   want,
need
know
taste
touch
with every bated breath.
(breathe)
See all of the forced smiles.
I sincerely hope
You can.
Drop it off,
gift delivered
fruitfully, faithfully.

she is
     the sap of the rarest tree
     forever watched
     prodded
     commercialized

the slow descent
     to swallow everything
     leaves her encased
     vilified
     sprouting spores of dust on a shelf

into a clockwork flower
     plucked and plumed
     sanitized in all the right places
     harlequin smile for the stage
     nipped and tucked for viewing pleasure

I ache as if you have died
but yet you still breath
just not me
so I grieve
for the ghost of us,
for two
for we only lived in me

love is
high
sunken
anoxic
breathing
to feel
all
nothing
between whispers
vague photographs
i am
whole
fractured
stitched
seamless
demand to
come
*******
love me
hate you
we want
pleasure
pain
knowledge
ignorance
something

i wonder, naked and exposed,
wrapped in yesterday's cologne,
how many times must you leave
before it is an arrival. do we not
grow so accustomed
to the tread of retreating steps
it transforms into a grown lullaby?
i should sleep peacefully,
not claw for you under the moon
rabid with memories that dance
and bleed in my head so fiercely
at times it is all i see.
you have been all i have seen
you have never seen me.
i have wondered how the lightest touch
leaves the darkest bruise
the smallest promise,
the harshest cut.