You said, “Ask me what I am thinking”
Obediently I did
Swiftly you kissed me
Tongue, lips, all of it.
And suddenly,
I felt
E v e r y t h i n g.

Chills up my spine
Arm hair raised
Stiff and straight
Senses heightened
Heart beating
Stampeding
Like a band of thoroughbreds racing.
Intense sensations
Swarms of tingling and tickling
Like someone softly blowing
On the back of my naked neck.

A shock wave of pleasure
Feelings immeasurable
To anything I’ve experienced.
This was no ordinary kiss
Warm, gentle, firm
Just enough wetness
To keep motion fluid.

Lasting only 10 seconds
But feeling endless
Like falling into an abyss
A bottomless pit
Deeper and deeper
Rapidly dropping
Picking up speed

Until your hands released my cheeks
And all the warmth left me.
Overtaken by an icy breeze
Compared to the heat I was just feeling.
Like pulling covers abruptly off a body
While in the middle of a slumber.

I never liked the feelings of being stripped
Unwillingly, unexpectedly
Especially
When the everything was so inviting.

You kissed me without permission
Then the position I was put in
Decisions I had to make quickly after
Because what I say now
Outlines our future
Defines our label
Of each other.

You put that pressure
Onto me
I wanted nothing of that responsibly
At least not to that degree
Don’t ask that to me
To state what I think we should be.

10 seconds ago
I only asked what you were thinking
I was unaware,
Completely unprepared
To know I would be deciding
The fate of our relationship
This now sinking ship.

I can swim
But I feel like I'm sinking
Having to live with the dreadful feeling
I’ve hurt another person again.

I got to be the lead
As I’d always dreamed
I never expected my role to be
Heart Breaker.

I want to go along with it,
Put up with the charades
Be the good actress
And pretend things didn't change
Say for your sake
I feel the same way.

But for this show to go on
For my role to be authentic
I must be honest.

I guess some friendships expire…

Even the best shows don't last forever
Enjoy the run for what it was
And say goodbye
Because it’s for the better.

You're standing in the rain
it's 4 am and the wine you drank
is still dancing in your blood,
the cigarette smoke still lingers in your hair,
and lipstick is smudged on your skin.

Where you are is unknown
the streets are thick with puddles
and all the people have wandered off to bed
but you didn't.

Because going home meant being alone
and you hate lying in a bed
with cold sheets
with  no one to hold.

You hate waking up without someones fingertips
tracing your lips
or combing your hair.

You hate standing in your kitchen
looking out your small ***** window
wondering where the person who was made to love you
disappeared to.

So you stay out
just to feel less lonely.
Even if the only company you have are a few scattered raindrops
and the faint glow of street lamps at 4 am.

I shredded my sorrow,
using its remains as compost for new things –
disaster, dawns, death,

canned my compunction
to collect dust on shelves of a bone-dry past –  
the dark making it easier not to visit,
(sometimes begging is a good thing)

froze my fear into ice cube trays
to spike my drinks in healthy doses –
I fear temporary things;
good intentions, newborns, and large bouquets of roses,

drew a hot bath of nostalgia
and soaked in what remained of you,
letting it warm me before draining away,

stuffed my joy into a handbag
to give out in bits to those who walk too heavy,
speak too softly through prisms of pain,

and when the disappointments I had left shackled,
gnawed through their bindings
to trail me like a heavy perfume,
I sat down with them and my doubt,
rolled every bit of clarity I could find into a joint,
and got them high enough
to float from my window,
into the night, to wane with the moon.

There once was a proper noun,
who started hanging with the wrong crowd.
With alluring adjectives who handed out compliments like candy
− gob smacking gossipers with an opinion on everything.
And with thrill-seeking adverbs,
who buddied up to the most dangerous of companions;
crash, dive, hurl, and gamble (to name a few).

Until the day the sentence came rambling into town,
planting punctuation in the form of kisses
on the noun’s eyelids, earlobes, and collarbone.

Provoking such admissions as, “My thighs stuck
to the black leather seats under the hot, cloudy skies
of that August afternoon, and my hair whipped
like willow branches in the wind,
when I rode on the back of his motorcycle.”
or, “He greets me every morning with a sun-drenched kiss”,
and, “The tulips were picked fresh from the ditch of
a curvy, country road, but now sit in a
vase by my bed, and are slowly wilting away.”

It would eventually be made clear
that the sentence had a nasty habit
of propositioning prepositions,
only to leave them hanging,
and to place things in parenthesis,
that simply did not belong.  

And so, the sentence would wind up leaving town,
or “run-on”, as the noun liked to tell it.
Went chasing after some particularly provocative expletives,
eventually trailing off with a faint set of ellipsis...

And the kindest of adjectives
came cooing after the noun,
calling to her; lovely, lustrous, listless.
And the adverbs brought with them
their gentlest of friends; comfort and console,
to speak with the noun:
softly, tenderly, lovingly- all witnesses.

But it was of no use,
and the noun whispered quietly:
“I have been enchanted with a single kiss
which can never be undone,
until the destruction of language.”


*based off of the poem Permanently, by Kenneth Koch

Starring through
       the eye glass of this
Empty. Empty bottle,
and then another
       and another
I extort the plights of this world
Post-pubescent, Bile.
       The gutters reject the rain the same
Alleviated
by the glint. The glimmer
       of the OPEN sign cascading across your
Eyes, repress the boredom.
The subdued state of Euphoria.
So lets drop the glass
       and propose our toasts
Renegades on a destructive course.

Humanity is so advanced
Constantly pushing boundaries
Solving the unknowns of existence
Day by day, one step closer
To all-seeing comprehension of reality

So close to a cure
Just short of a solution
No knowledge can hide from us forever
We press on to illuminate
The dark depths of mortality

Seeking truth
We go where none have gone
Pursue an answer just beyond our grasp
Closer than ever before
Yet still outside the realm of reality

Or maybe our reality
Is just a fabrication
The materialization of a fiction
Whose architect works by power of suggestion
Under the pseudonym of "Sanity"

A fiction of simple skeleton:
Spine of logic and ribs of reason
Whose blood flows rich in measured season
Headed by calculated cognition
Infinite, within the bounds of Sanity

But we sink our teeth into each fact
We cling to all we think we know
We say "question everything" and "think beyond"
Convince one another we actually do
As we dance on our ropes pulled by Sanity

     And we see as we wish to see
     And we wish for all we ever saw

I was never a sinking ship, just the remains
of an ocean liner, settling on the sea’s lips.
At least, that’s what I think.
I am not a tragedy, no,
but so many of my pages are empty and, my god, I need
you to know that if I am a book,
I am half-complete (not half-unfinished––I'm learning, you see?),
but it’s the back half,
and a few scattered paragraphs before that.
Now and then I write in my own history,
just for others to read and believe
there’s something more to me
than a leather bound cover over cheap poetry.
That’s all I am, really.

I’m just trying to keep my head above the water.
I keep my secrets close, and my happiness bottled
––for the nights when I need something stronger
than spirits that burn on the way down,
something that can keep these ghosts
from crawling back out my mouth
to tumble from my lips at last.

Listen, I'm really not hard to figure out.

It’s broken glass,
it’s the smash of a car crash,
it’s the smell of smoke and ash,
it’s a statue of a girl learning to laugh,
and to know, and how to venture
into you. I count the number of times I've been sure,
on my knuckles instead of my fingertips,
because it wasn't the touch, it was the fist
that first said: I am better than this
(fires will die but they fight harder than all else).
Besides, my fingers are not for counting out.
I think they're for you,
to weave yours through,
and to feel on your skin
when I spell out I love you,
because my fingers do not flinch
as easily as my mouth does cringe
and strangle truths in anger.

If you feel I am pulling into myself,
remember I'm likely collapsing inwards,
and know this:
broken homes beget broken bones,
but more often they spit
broken boys and girls from their lips.
My body is new,
no longer mould and mildew,
but steel, mortar, and brick,
and stone
and stick.

I am almost always cold.
My wrists look too thin for the weight of my world.

I carry on, but I am not strong.
**** knows how long those days have been gone.

To the person who will somehow fall for me:
I am not a tragedy,
but a mess of a story.
I write dumb rhymes to feel like I'm growing.
I speak as a cynic, but at heart I'm all dreams.
Sometimes I take a minute to listen and, slowly,
I think I'm becoming someone worth being.

I seem bare as a clinic and empty as glossy magazines,
but it's all a set and some props, one day I'll end scene.
I'm not ready yet, but on One Day, I'll be.

I swear, I'm almost there.
My world is readying,
like winter prepared
to yield to spring.