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.

You've eaten two chicken burgers in front of me

and the second time
I realized
you were beautiful.

That sounds stupid, but hear me out;
your eyes
they're perfect
your lashes are so delicate
like gossamer black frames of thin, long, lady's gloved fingers.
I sound crazy, I know
But I'm writing a poem about it
and Art is a license for madness;
So leave me be.
I'm stalking pictures of you on the webs
of the internet
But these golems
these flat, lifeless, smiles
leave me unsatisfied
None of them capture that moment
when I was
suspended
in a state of silent staring
like cobwebs in empty, abandoned room corners
hanging
quiet
undisturbed

your voice muted by the screaming
in your eyes

as you
romantically
perfectly
delicately
bit into that burger.

I wonder how I looked then.

My favorite music is imperfection
the little breaks
the husky
inaudible screams
the short breaths
the ahs
the un-understandable pronunciation
mispronunciations
the weird rise and fall
and awkward syllabication.

Like a cd that's got just enough for one last spin
rough
scratchy
perfection of imperfection

My favorite music is imperfection
off key harmony
and drunk, smoked-up throats
the hard breathing
the sharp little pitches
the accents
the sudden switch from singing to speech
the guitar that's just a little too loud
the drums that are a little too fast
the back up singer that forgets the lines
or the lead singer too drunk to remember what his own hands wrote
prolonged Ssssss....
off time beats
and ****** up base lines

Imperfection's my favorite music.

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.

Imagine for a moment that the weather is a ******

She is bored as she peels off the chipping paint on my window
and with eyebrow raised flicks the pieces at my bed
(the same bed I am lying on)

I hear the woosh and flutter of her dress
as she parades and struts around.
She is purposely blowing cigarette smoke to my face
like a high and mighty *****
with painted lips and black stockings.

I pay her no heed

She screams and ruffles the trees for attention
flinging branches and leaves in a fit
she speaks and her spit hits my eyes in little droplets.

Her heavy breathing
and banging of doors and windows
is becoming a little too dramatic

I close the window again,
I've closed it a million times
and with her dainty fingers she pries it open to peek

she sulks in a corner
eyeing me crossly
annoyed at my reading
my writing
my contemplation

and true to her nature

          she does it all again...

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.

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.

I never write poetry
I write crap in line breaks

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.

There is an emptiness
inside me
consuming my peace.

we are.

abandoned shoes
in the middle of the sidewalk.

rusted metal
car casings,
ribs
where the washed clothes
dry.

painted graffiti
in a hidden place,

whispered secrets,
bottled letters
to the ocean's waves

we are the ocean

the ocean inside the seashell  
discarded pencil shavings at the nearby starbucks.

Unsteady hands
coarse, rusty locks
we are.

the staring blank spaces,
the screaming questions,
the tired voices,

they who do not speak.

we are

water
splashing on the banks of this urban river

another tropical rain
storm

puddles of rainbows
by the auto shop

foil fossils
plastic skeletons
trash cadavers
block the concrete mouths

gaping, open, waiting.


children's hands
bowls of chocolate liquid
thrown, given, shared

gifts of laughter and disease.

mosaic of colored umbrellas
limping
open
close.

rubber slippers
flopping
running
slide.

there is no shelter
there is only rain.

love you.:)

when deep inside it's
'I'm not sure'
fake electronic love
vague posts of
'this is what I want to tell you!'
yet *you has no name.

in person a plastered smile
wearing masks of
'everything's fine'
'no of course it wasn't you'
words hidden
ambiguous
easily retractable

secret

was that post for me?
well then this one is for you

answering vagueness with vagueness
in this fake electronic love

with hearts beating
to nothing but cowardice.

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

Distant bells start the day
the sun casts strips on blue-gray walls
cobwebs hanging lazily above
not strong enough to pull bodies
from beds
of hard wood and tiresome sleep

on the edge of this pencil, a poem
lazier
watching specs of dust
gracefully failing to fly

Early rising
needing more sand than most

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

As I was making my way to the kitchen
I dropped the cup I was holding
and it bounced on the floor, bangin in its wake
but still the sound did not fill the emptiness of this large room
on this lonely night

I miss you

I miss everything
anything
nothing

No face comes to mind
no moment, no place, no voice
only a feeling
a feeling that I was once whole.

I am broken now
like the shadows the trees' leaves cast
on my solitary walks

I am quiet now
or have I always been?

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.

sometimes my apathy falls
like a silk robe to the ground,
and once again I stand before you

naked.

ashamed of myself
I try to cover the monster that you ran from.

I walk on the sands of the hourglass
for our time has ended.

there is only one set of footsteps
because I needed you to carry me
but failed to realize that you were not strong enough.

I sit alone on the beach
unable to listen to Best Coast
because that would make me cry.

I hug myself
and feel very
very small.

the gentle waves of memories
lick at my feet:
your unimpressed face when I laugh at the way you mispronounce words,
or just your face
or just the way you could make me laugh
your disgust when I joke about your **** ***,
or just your ***
or just the way we could joke about that.

it almost makes me smile
but you are the only person alive who knows my tickle spot.

the way your fingers comb from the back of my neck
to my bangs like a fisherman's net,
a feeling the sea breeze wants me to forget
as it tousles my hair violently.

the shore has too much of your face.

I dive into the water to cleanse myself
of the haunting absence of your presence

but I am too small.

my thoughts and your words surround me,
and in my attempt for closure
I am nothing more than closed.

cleansing nothing at all,
I drown in this baptism
as the distorted and unfamiliar
waters of the past soak my lungs
emptying me of breaths of hope
filling me with waters of desperation.

I am sinking into the darkness of depression
my chest compressed like the lungs
of a deep sea diver with no chance of return.

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

You're the only one I've ever known to stare
at the face of the clock on your wrist,
carefully following the

tick.

tick.

tickin.

just so you could brag about
what every two-eyed person missed--
catching the minute hand move, in its slight little twitch
or maybe it was the hour
I fail to remember which.

Saw it with your own two eyes you said to me while
smiling
and i shook my head in disbelief,
amused at that tricky timing.

I looked at you and thought some thoughts
of how your you-ness has always been
a what you get is not what you see,

your patience forever a complexity,

and your determination, the perplexor
needs its own personal illustrator
.
You've always known where you were headed
but you also made sure that you'd take
the longest, most
                                                
                                             loopingly,

                           w
                                 i
                  n
       d
                           i
            ng-est,
                                                    weirdest path
to get and eat life's cake.

I knew I couldn't follow you
but well I gave it a try
and when you finally put your wings on
I was just happy to see you fly

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"

I am the broken binding
of a tattered book

many times opened, never
finished

edges brown
from fingers, passing

no notes on my borders
few sentences underlined

creases, plenty
mementos of 'come-back-to-read-you-later'
thin brown lines
like palms
all ready to break

I write "you exist"
on the fragility of my wrist
because I need to remind myself
that this isn't a nightmare
and life has good parts too.

I need these words to fetter me
as if I were something solid
because I haven't felt that lately

I am the dead leaf
detached from branches
broken off from life

I am the echo in the mountain
too late
belonging to no one

I am the carving on the tree trunk
a reminder of a love already gone
fading, unnoticed

I am the falling star
burning, blazing
dead a million years.

I am nothing
but I exist.

I exist.

have a God,
be a deist instead
then marry me,
the mediocre Catholic.

let's have children,
let's not have children
because "Parents, they ******* up."
but you'd make a great dad
I think
yes? no?
maybe?
and I'd make a great mom...
...sort of.

We'd love them (the children or child..whichever)
and we'd be weird
so they'd (or he or she..again, whichever) be weird
and their friends would say,
"Who the **** are The Beatles?"

Eh...let's not get married
yet.
let's hold hands first
or be together a year
or get through one meal without having to giggle and look away
because I caught you staring at me
or was it me who was...never mind.

Now I'm studying my hands,
the ones you have not held,
the ones with the ugly, fat, stubby, unlady-like fingers
the same fingers you said you loved.

you're such an idiot sometimes.

Remember that time you said I was beautiful?
which time?
oh right, you've said it more than once;

you idiot.

Do you notice how when you're not looking at me
I stare at your face?
your eyes?
your lips?
your perfect lashes?
No?

good.

I should stop now.
see you soon,
you

idiot.

sometimes I think of you and die inside. and I end up crying in bathroom stalls. I miss you. I miss you.

sometimes I want to send you all these books I've read because they remind me of you but the truth is that no two people read the same book, no two people are in the same relationship, a conversation  is not shared, a moment, a laugh, a look. We were never a we. There was a you and an I. A you with your thoughts and an I with mine.

sometimes I think that perhaps if I write you letters. endlessly. endlessly. and put them all into a box I would eventually come to realize that there will never be a possibility of you replying to them. And you turn into nothing more than a thing in the distance that my voice will be unable to reach. and slowly. slowly. I will accept that you have gone. that how we are is no longer what we once were and that we can never be that again.

we used to refer to each other as "home". are you a wandering vagabond just like me? are you a homeless, restless, soul? are you like Julian's tourist? I am. I am. I am. You were my ultimate symbol of acceptance. and now nowhere is safe. I have taken to walking the streets every chance I get. Every time my mind is not locked on some book. on some lecture. on some dream. I am walking. walking. walking. It is the only way I can survive. to stop. to pause. would only bring me to the loss of you. it is this reality I run from.

I read book upon book to escape you. blare music to my ears til I'm dead. but all the words contain you. every line has you. the songs sing in your voice. you are everywhere. there is nowhere to run.

I'm sorry for being too much like Tereza, you deserved more than that.

and I am too scared to open my journal.

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