Love,
Lust,
Lies.

Still yet to decide
Which one defines
Everything we left behind.

Then again,
Perhaps it goes a little something like this;

Love?
Lust lies.

being a poet is not
sentimental. it’s not
pretty. there’s nothing romantic about diving off a
bridge just to hear the water reverberate the sound of your ex lover’s
name. rain sounds like nothing but
falling blood and you’re always angry that it ruins your
shoes but is never enough to really
**** you. being a poet is a degenerative
brain disease, i heard
once. there’s some things doctors can’t
fix. there’s other things doctors can’t
name. all medicine starts to sound like it’s named after
a god. words never say what you actually
mean. you’re bleeding stanzas at the
mouth and everyone files past
you like you’re a waste of
time. when people tell you you say pretty
words you erupt like the earthquake in los
angeles this morning because the words might sound
pretty but what you’re saying
isn’t. everything weighs so *******
heavy on your shoulders and you hold the names of your ex
lovers names on your
tongue until they melt into
blood. i don’t know where your
hands are, nobody
does. the wolves are the only things that even have a
hint of what your thriving heart is shouting. you’re bound to feel too
much and at the funeral service of a man you’ve never
met you’re going to be crying in the
corner while everyone wonders who you
are and why you even
care. your words save so many lives but they’re bound to miss a
few, especially
yours.

Before I met you, I was a sapling -
But since then, I've grown.
And now that my branches have grown,
I'm closer to you than ever before.
And sometimes, my leaves,
Like fingertips,
Graze your matured bark in the breeze,
The same as when I timidly brushed against your thigh,

But, you are blooming with intimidating velocity
And I am wishfully thinking.

Because, to you,
I will always be that sapling,
And even though our branches may be at reach
They will always have to stretch to be together.
For our roots are anchored
Ever so deep in the ground
And there will always be that inescapable, heartbreaking space
Between our hopeless, tree trunk bodies.

My rusty chains yelp and squawk
Shrill, yet somehow on the verge of becoming monotonous
So far, weary from humdrum-ly swaying
Presently induced alone by Nature’s bitter, raw sighs
Bound to this
Bastille of a rotting exterior
Eventually decrepit, at first, from use
Now merely deteriorating as of neglect

Once-stimulating summers fade
Into seemingly sempiternal November evenings
Dejected and funereal
Echoing the nostalgic meandering trumpets that once coiled
The lengths of my now cadaverous frame—
Their blue blossoms left timid and etiolated
Reflecting the ghostly, lilac hues of an insomniacs raccoon-like eyes
And brittle, wispy veins begin to dilapidate

I yearn
For a sudden rekindling
Reminiscing
About memories only I can keep alive
For the exploiters I was dependent on,
Like the withered azure trumpets used upon a time, have bloomed
Yet I still stoically anticipate their return

I pine for their sun-kissed skin graced in airy cottons
Their thrilled shrieks drowning those of my (less electric) fraying chains
Recollections of their highs juxtaposed with my low
My faith, my only zeal

Recently I heard that in Spain they changed the word ‘marriage’
From permanent tense to temporary
That worries me
But everybody’s so rapidly changing
And love couldn’t possibly stay ‘unconditional’
You shouldn’t love out of fear
Maybe nobody is ‘meant to be’
No ‘soulmates’
Nor ‘fate’
Not that I ever believed in those fairy-tale yarns
But I perhaps enjoy the idea
Of somebody forever finding me somewhat
Tolerable
But now we’re accepting
That everything is terrifyingly perishable
And that is a very scary thought,
Emphasising, when you think about it
A reminder
That
Every
Living
Creature
On Earth
Dies
A   l   o   n    e

Learning Objective:
Discover hatred for a poem you previously loved