Enter the space
of individuals-not-allowed.

bodies merge
knee to knee
shoulder to shoulder
face to face
thousand hands passing the silver faces
feeding the dark
fingernails of grime and engine heat.

Spewing out smoke

a moving temple,
a makeshift market,
a piece of art,

my nation's identity.

If I could catch anything
with these small stubby hands
I'd catch the train
that leads to  you.

I never realized
you were the* only reason
for facebook

and as I watched you walk
away from me,
I knew I never tried hard enough

I wish these sheets were a cave
I could hide in forever
bury my face in
comfortable old threads
and familiar smells

where time moves slowly

breaths
deep and full
lungs filled to capacity
diaphragm like the arch of a gymnast's back

where the darkness swallows
rocking back and forth
cradles you upon its tongue.

but it is what it is

..a scrunched up fist of frustration
tired sponge to daily tears

a ***** throw away rag
to an unfolded morning rush

it's
     just
           a piece  

           of cloth.

like the legend of the phoenix, all ends with beginnings*
-Daft Punk

sometimes
my heart creeps into my mind
like young lovers' hands
reaching for palms and fingertips.

my mind tells me to forgive you
but my heart is heavy with pain

my mind tells me to accept what has happened
but my heart is full of memories

my mind explains the pain away
but all my heart does is feel

my mind tells me to forgive you.

it is seven twenty-four AM
there is a violin playing in the distance
and I am still haunted by you.

I am slowly letting you go though,
like feathers falling loosely
from my fingertips.

I watch you float slowly to the ground
where you can no longer hurt me.

I feel myself grow taller
as you lay beside my feet

and maybe someday a soft wind
will lift you slowly
into something else.

you are

gone
pounded footsteps unto the floor
keys clanging
on the bowl beside the door
crashing like mother's china.

still feel
your hand on the shelf,
my shoulder.
the shaking cupboard,
my heart

these the ghosts
the shadows
the flicker
of the wet-paint-traveler?

covered in reds and pinks and sunsets
dragged his colors,
streaked my insides,
marked my rib cage

or

is it the make up
once swallowed
attempting inner beauty?

wanted to change

but you told me to stay
the drab old wallpaper.

You left
and it looks like
ended up changing after all.

I am a leech hungry for pity.
I say I want death
but what I really crave is recognition for the life lost.

If I cut my wrists
will the red flash like warning signs
in an empty road?
will the blue of bruises
cry out to you like a lake in the desert?

How much will it take for you to see me?
I'm sorry my tears are colorless
they cannot paint the story of my pain
they cannot make the ribs of this cathedral
a stained-glass window.

I am as silent and grim as a cemetery
looking peaceful in just the right light.
Look beyond the beautiful
mausoleums,
the ivory plaques,
the angel statuettes...
dig deep for the decaying bones
the foul smell
the dead body that I am,
being eaten and gnawed by worms
and invisible, microscopic, living things.

As I snake my way past crowds
I bow my head
and hope
that no one I offend

I say sorry for every contact
every brush of a sleeve
I'm sorry
so sorry
pardon me
exhaling so many apologies
it's the air I that I breathe.

I'm sorry that I am flesh and bone
physically present to touch you
sorry for my body's contact unto yours
sorry I am here
sorry I am occupying your space
sorry for the footsteps I leave where I stand

so sorry I exist

go ahead
push
and shove

"I'm sorry"

I press play

he sings
I cease
speaking.

I hang my voice on julian casablancas' lips.
I am mute
as he breathes on the microphone, quiet
as he speaks
hums
and
frees his thoughts

he stops.

and for a moment
in that moment,
that pause until I play the next song
he's told my story

all of it
everything.

and I let out
a whispered

"thank you"

Here's my plan
I've thought of it long and hard:

First I'll collect every beautiful word on the planet
listen to every song that contains you
and photographically memorize every child's eyes
every mothers' warmth
every cool breeze
and every single scent of every single field of every newly cut blade of grass
basically, everything that captures the way your fingers feel
when they're wrapped around mine
and I'll take all these and fit them into one cardboard box which I will wrap and prettify
and morph into a poem
which I will end
with stars.

I will then give it to the mailman, who'll read it and know
that it's all about you
and he'll travel the world
searching, going into the places where I failed to go
and find you sitting
the way you do
with both feet up
on the stool
your knees bent
and your face contorted the way only your face can ever be contorted.

He will hand you the poem and you will read it
and know that I am still here,
and you will be moved
and fall in love with me again.

Then you'd begin searching for me though I already told you where I'd always be
and once you remember, you'll find me
and tell me that you've read my poem about mothers and their tender hands
and children with their bright eyes
and the grass which already says it all in itself
and also,
stars
and most importantly you'll tell me that you want me to write the rest of it
because there is so much more we can do together beyond the stars
and I will look at you as you tell me this
and try to familiarize myself with the face I've never had to familiarize myself with before
and I'll stand there watching your lips move
your chest heaving from each breath
and notice that they've changed and somehow I will seem to know that my mouth would not know how to fit into yours
and my head will have to move about a bit to find that nook on your chest it used to be glued too

and I will read that poem back
and then I'll see that just like your lips and your chest, all the words have changed
and that the person that I actually wrote it for
has already failed to exist the moment I penned
the last word

and so I end this poem
with stars.

today as i scanned
the people who liked
read
and commented
i came across a girl
who seemed to understand

i sent her a 'thank you'
simple and true

because when i thought i'd come across
a wide lonely land
she stood there beside me and then held my hand

and as i stared at the white block
with the send message
button,
i wanted to tell her

"see,
this is the boy i love"

and i knew that she'd listen

"i've never met him"
i'd add with some grace

"heck i've never seen his face
past the black and white box
beside the comments his placed"

then i'd pause for effect and wonder a bit
but there's no doubt in my mind
it's a feverish fit.

"he has a way with words"

i'd tell her some more

"when he speaks about love
it's like it makes up his core"

love 'im never met 'im
and i let out a sigh
(though she will never hear)
and i bid her g'bye.

It's not that you're disposable or replaceable...he just chose to forget how special you are, what a good person you are, how beautiful you are inside and out. You are. You are. You are. Stop crying, you are. Perhaps he'll remember someday, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that you don't forget. You are worth it, beautiful. You are. You really are.

I found a sketch
I did

of your face.

I am careful
as my fingers pinch the edge
feeling the straight line

one hand separating from the other.

I start from the top
and end in the bottom.
going the same direction as
us.

I am careful
as I rip away the shreds of you.

careful to destroy every semblance
to the face I tried to capture.

for the honesty that existed there
was one that my own hands
and eyes
added

and it is
in the mass of the irregular
white pieces
and gray lines

that I see the truth of you.

I grasp the pieces in my palms
and clasp
and feel
as they rest in the spaces
between my fingers

it is in this mass
of shapeless nothingness

that I begin to really feel

you.

caught between the life you want to live
and the life you're already living

everything collapsing
your dreams dissolve
on the smallest of smallest of ponds
while the ocean you were meant to swim  
lies just over your fear

hiding behind someone else's shadow
because he was here first
because he is not afraid

yet your mind runs deep
your ideas just take longer to collect
that's all it is

for our greatest fear is not that we are

inadequate
but that we are
beyond
for to be great is to be different
and to be different is to be
alone

I feel the feeling of wanting to die,like standing on the edge of a high place;
glass elevator ascending
closer to heaven.  

as I read my book and look up
your eyes say,
"you are beautiful"
as shyly, they look away


I am ugly.

I am a monster with stubby fingers
a dead animal on my head
a screaming in my brain
marks on my face like dots splattered from broken ink


you said they looked like stars
and then you made me cry

I thought I'd never do that again.

I crack the glass under my feet
break through and fall,

hot wax dripping on my back
my shoulders
meat and bones, crashing
falling
drawing
closer to heaven.

Not exactly the best day ever
not the worst either.

I wish I could say that something amazing
or significant happened
but nothing did.

I'm not the same person I was yesterday
but I have no idea what's changed, exactly.

I feel kinda sad
but not the bad kind of sad that has me crying,
it's that kind of sad from knowing
I haven't done enough.

I didn't live up to this day's potential.
I feel like I failed to do something.

I really should start living in the world more

*my brain's getting too stuffy

What's the most difficult word in the
                                                                        tio                                          
                                                       dic      
                                                                                      na
                                                                                                 r
                                                                                                      y?
well
for a shy person,

it's hello.

Another song
another poem
and all I read,
and hear
is myself.*

I borrow other people's words
because somehow they're better than mine
at expressing my inside

maybe the thing is
that no matter how alone we feel,
there's always someone out there
writing
putting down
capturing what that alone-ness feels like

I'm afraid
I'm beginning to frame you in forever.
But we are young
And that is stupid.
But what if I want to be stupid?
Hey as long as it's with you.
I'm listening to that song you gave me,
"born to multiply
born to gaze into night skies
all you want's one more Saturday"
All these ideas of youth,
fun, carefree,
reckless.
"I feel like I could just fly
but nothing happens every time
I try"
We are young and
I can't stop thinking about you.
And pictures of you make me smile
And I replay your laugh again and again,
unending like that gif of you
in my phone
on my palm, you
in a cosmic, comical,
dance loop.
Whoever thought that
that boy
that boy who sat at the back of the class
the boy I'd never talked to
and only shyly added up on facebook
would end up being you?
Maybe
maybe this won't last forever
or even that long
(at least not by adult standards;
who rate everything by time
and not the intensity and quality
of our shared moments)
Maybe this won't last forever
But at least now it feels like it could.
The song has ended
...but I shall play it again
because there is such a thing as a replay button
And you are still here
you can still dance on my palm
you can still smile at me across a concert crowd
and we can still walk the pavements at night.
We may be young
But I've already imagined telling you
"Hey,
no matter what happens between us
let's agree that what we have right now,
it's real"

Whoever said,
"Parting was such sweet sorrow"
obviously never meant/met
you

because

when you go
you take all the light with you

NO

not the light
for all light does is help one to see

what you have taken
is but every single shred of happiness
and
hope of ever getting these shreds back again.

Maybe it was Shakespeare?

How lucky he was then to have lived
and died
meeting only people he could bear
to part with

and how unfortunate
am
I.

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

I breathe in the life that surrounds me
listen to the million conversations
people utter and forget when words leave their lips.

I grab at them and keep the ones
that cage my formless sentiment

I tuck them into the folds
of my eyelids,

I close for clarity,
night comes, and the world becomes my eyelids,
escape, fly, and play in darkness
the words

but in this freedom they need to be put down
with guns
fire need and purpose,

restlessness.

my hands tremble as the words seeping
from my eyes to the lines on my fingertips
spiraling inward.

they need to be
put down or they will leave and fly away
run the course of being eaten and said
eaten
and said

mouth after mouth
chewed
spat out
and finally

lost.

never to be more than gossip and hushed murmurs
of could be
poetry

I am in love

with the life that pours out of every slam poets' lips
the life that flips out from all my books pages
the life that pounds out of a good rock record
the life that flows in a contemporary dance folding with the music

the life you breathe into my lips
the life from the warmth of every hand
shoulder
and arm
stuck in awkward hugs
and interlocks.

I am in love with the life

lost

when the heart breaks
when the magical tree is cut down
when childhood fades
when the loved one dies
or lives
away.

I am in love with the life
stolen
by anger from hurt
by difference
       ...in names for the same God
          
                       ...in color from the same box of crayons
                
  ...in definitions from the same thesaurus
                      
                                                       ...in beliefs from misunderstandings.

I am in love with the life
we breathe
we swallow
we cry

right now.

I offer you this poem,
or an idea of what this poem could be

because all I've got is 18 years in my back pocket
and that really ain't much life yet

I'll add the beautiful things I notice
but I feel I'm becoming too old
to notice beauty,
that's child's play

am I too young or too old?
usually it's both.

I'll probably stash the things I don't want to say
in the way that can be understood directly
because I want to sound deep and mature
and also because I want you to think
like me, for a bit
to borrow my eyes
and maybe you'll find what I mean
and maybe you'll find something even better
and maybe we'll finally feel that someone out there understands.

maybe

I want this poem to scare you
into doing something about some things
you've always wanted to change
or things I've always wanted to change but have always been
too scared, too young, or too stubborn to do.

I want this poem to move you
to write one that's even better
because maybe your eyes are like glass
so clear, you forget that it's there
or foggy
or blurry

but surely
new

but I have yet to find the words

I haven't looked through enough eyes
I haven't opened enough hearts
and I haven't read enough poems like this

though I don't mind spending my life searching...

but still I offer you
the idea
the possibility of a poem like this
because I'd really much rather like to believe

that it exists
          ...out there

as opposed to the alternative which is just too sad to ponder.

I never write poetry
I write crap in line breaks

Static electricity is an imbalance
of electric charges

If your words are so weightless
why is it so hard to let go?

maybe love is static electricity

a transfer
in hopes of striking a balance.

erratic exchange
back and forth
insults and compliments
good and bad

static electric charge is created
when two surfaces contact and separate,
and one of the surfaces
has a high resistance to electrical current*

you got more than you gave
******* insulator
contact and separate

contact
separate
you left me, a hot wire
waiting to explode
starving for peace

and your lies are rubber balloons
sticking to my cotton heart

cloth grown thin from trying to scrape past
the rough edges of broken promises

and the more I try to wipe the lies
to see them clearly
the more they cling to me.

Like poison
I feel myself dying slowly
you are killing me
without even touching me,
the hair on my arms rising
from the chill of what you've become

they say doing a thing 29 times makes it a habit
then I thought of all the times this day
this week
this month
that I didn't see you
and think that
that had to have been more
than 29

yet
I'm still not ******* used to it.

he knows it's justified
to **** to survive*

dark thoughts still come sometimes
but I think I'm going to be all right.