I find myself soul searching inside Cafes
As if to expect sitting there
The six year old who asked how the cricket sings
The two year old who could not be understood
And the first grader who'd just learned to fly

But every sip of coffee does not give something back
The records playing tug no inner chords
And the pages are as blank filled
As when the notebook was first opened

Strangers' eyes do not hold couplets
And their smiles are painted curves
Of chipping, fading memories

I am intrigued...
who are you?
I say to the boy
with the eyes screaming
"save me"

his smile smelling of dead things
and boiling tar

what are you?
and he laughs
a sound like the quiet echo of a raindrop in nowhere.

I've been curing my loneliness
with solitude

talking to myself
instead of somebody else.

I've been spending days
staring at the ceiling
dreaming myself to outer space
or New York

instead of leaving my room.

I've been writing letters
whose length would make Anna Karenina blush
all tucked into the curves of my cerebral cortex

instead of sending

"hey, hw r u?"
text messages

I've been curing my loneliness
with solitude

if you call crying alone
with my own hand patting my back

curing

I wish I was happier
Then maybe I'd be normal
Or is it
If I were more normal,
I'd be happier
?

Mind if I play pretend?*

What if it was you and me
on a breezy hill

         overlooking nothing but grass

                                                       grass

grass waving to the wind
like waves that never crash

would you sit beside me
and stare at it
be silent
comfortable enough
in each others' thoughts?

I would watch you
from the corner of my eye
and you would be
smiling

(I always have you smiling in my mind)

your perfect bangs ruined
tousled
yet beautiful.

I'd watch your magic eyes
flashing
shining
bright.

boy with the old poet's soul.

looking at the same field
yet you'd see it better
than I

you will capture the parts that contain the unexplainable
and hold it
in your heavenly rucksack

while all I have are
eyes bending the light,
making sense of the colors.

your mouth will not open
you do not tell me what you see

but you free what you've trapped
in your poetry

and there do you give

you to me.

As I stare at the face in the mirror I think
It would look good through the window
of a casket

where time and decay can touch it
away from peering eyes

when all the thoughts are

              what she could have been

                                            what she was

and not

                                                               what she failed to be


So many have sealed their fates as legends
by dying
young

Like fireworks
that fly high and burst
as the crowd ooohs and ahhhs


I don't want to be the stars
hung forever
burning

burning
until everyone forgets their beauty

for in a crowd of white dwarfs
so few become supernovas
and there is always the risk
of becoming
a self-destructive
drag others down with you

black hole.