today was the day I was getting you back.
nothing was going stop me this time.
everything was perfect.
it rained just like it did on our first day.
I had a white shirt on,
just like the one I wore that day, just like it.
everything was perfect.

as the rain fell from the sky all I cared about was you.
not if it was going to rain harder
nor if it was going to lighten up.
the only thought in my mind was... you.

I kissed you.
and I loved it.
God I loved it.
I loved every minute, every second.
I  loved the way you tasted.
how your lips felt on mine
how we were in perfect harmony with each other.
it was amazing.

then reality hit.
and she spoke.
she didn't want what I wanted..
she didn't want me the way I wanted her.
I didn't know her for long but I was broken
it wasn't suppose to hurt this much.
why does it hurt..

1945

when the word flits off their tongue

a b u s i v e

it will taste like 3 days gone sour

like the lick of a catch before sacrificial slaughter you will caress

it and bury it in the backyard

you will let their lips cradle your neck like a baby while the ship slips under

slowly, willing


they

laugh you off like an old acquaintance

burn curses into you

make you pay sorry as toll tax till the end of time how could you have been

so

destructive my sweet nymph

my eternal beam of light they will laugh you off as a lying child tried like a old witch


your last lover, the one before she

the one you still choke on every time you purge your body

clean of the sin of nutrition

tells you that you and them were not inherently bad

but together an abuser's tale

do substances take responsibility for the damage they

cause together?

did the two uranium nuclei know they would call their honeymoon hiroshima

how atomic the love must have been

and oh, baby

how so catastrophic




the consequence.

I can tell you about the girl.

Her freckles were beige constellations,
and her voice was husky and rasped
like birds before the churning of a storm.

She was weird and laughed at everything I said -
which made her even weirder,
because I'm only funny in certain photos
and in certain clothes.

Her left arm was covered in scars and burns.
"As you can tell, I'm right handed," she said.
Arthritis surrounded her wrists and other joints,
and all I could think about were my
grandmother's arthritis crippled hands,
and if the girl would thank the arthritis, one day,
for no longer allowing her to self-harm.

One of her feet were bigger than the other
and, when she walked, she would lose balance.
"I'm not sure if the world is too fast
or if I'm too slow. Then again," she winked,
"it's probably because of my feet."
I liked her because she treated me like a person,
but didn't take me as seriously
as I took myself.

I struggled with self-respect
and she struggled with a drug addiction.
Her arm was needle park
and sometimes she missed ******
more than she missed me.

She wasn't the type of girl to shake
without her drugs -
she'd, instead, talk about them
like they were old friends.
She understood them
more than she understood herself.

After a few months of ***
and, "I'll be sad when you leave,"s,
I called her my girlfriend
and she smiled.
Flecks of speckled angles, bright,
I saw her, first, she accepted
my night.

Five days later,
she overdosed on morphine.
I picked her up.

Her eyes were glazed over.
I said, "I love you,
but this is *******."
She cried and said,
"Forgive me."

I lain in bed, next to her -
next to the avoidance of death.
She asked how I was
and I said, "Everything I write is ****,
but I'm glad I can write ****** poetry
about how we'll be okay."

She asked, "We will be okay, right?"

I hope.

The night before, she whispered,
"The quickest way to break a heart
is to pretend you have one."

Howling,
like you've never heard before.
And she sat next to me, radiating.
Her body jumped with every bump,
as foam blossomed out of her mouth.

And I promised her
that I would get her there in time.
And her dealer promised me
he didn't give her anything.

Howling.
I was howling,
like you and I have never heard before.
And her glazed eyes would open.
And my eyes were wide shut.
Her body lain crooked,
like the antenna of the wrecked car
my grandfather left me.

And I wondered if the planet
was moving too quickly
or if I wasn't moving fast enough -
before I decided the only time
that was real, was now.

Howling.
The police sirens were howling,
like the suburbs have never heard before.
The wails were begging me to pull over.
And the flashes of red and blue
danced across her ivory skin.
She mumbled to her deceased grandma,
and I asked her to stay.

And in that moment,
I tried to numb myself.
I tried to detach
and let the river carry me.

Howling.
I was howling,
like the deputy
had never heard before.
I begged for an escort.
I begged to go back into my car.
He looked at her knotted body
but didn't see her like I saw her.
And he told me to remain calm.
He told me to stop yelling -
but I couldn't express enough.
I couldn't release enough desperation.

And the river carried me
to the rocks before the fall.
At the bottom, I knew she was dying,
and this killed me, most of all.

Howling.
I was howling her name,
like she had heard before -
but not this time.
No, not this time.

The night before, she whispered,
"The quickest way to break a heart
is to pretend you have one."

I see how white light startles.
I snapped a pic and she spun in circles.
She wanted a photograph
to cover her mother's epitaph,
so she could have a laugh.

She smoked to get away -
but this isn't what'd she say,
exhaling, "All we are is carbon
and a lack of empathy."

We blended into hues of
microwave dinners
and church alters.
I used to tell her to go
just to halt her.

We prayed to get away -
but that's not what we'd say,
whispering, "Help us be more
than carbon and a lack of empathy."

And I want to tell her that I understand
what it feels like to be fake, insignificant,
and a shadow on the sidewalk of society.

And I want to tell her that I also borrow
the experiences of others --
that I, too, learn feelings
by stopping and staring at personal wreckage,
like a tourist of emotions,
like an inevitable wish of a human being.

The sloppy rain slips and slides down the fogged-up windows,
and this lets me know that I am not as small as I think I am.
In a city of three million plus, I feel like the soul of a nation,
even though I'm just a twenty-one year-old piece of plastic, drinking a hipster beer.

The waitress has frizzy hair and oily skin.
She's holding in late-night infomercials and missed ballet recitals, behind her words.
She looks at my luggage and asks where I came from or where I'm going,
and I tell her that the fun thing is that I have no idea where I'm going --
and that I still haven't decided where I've came from.

This city allows new-found anonymity, and I want that to be my cause.
With each passing glance, I know they don't see me, and, to me, that's the slumber-kissed throat-slit I've always dreamt of...

...the streets play music that I only hear -- and I know that's not fair, but I don't care.

And the homeless represent the bowels of the city.
And the businessmen are the ghost-filled engine.
And the middle class is the defense-mechanism I always wanted for Christmas.
And I am the empty delusion, desperately seeking a new pollution.

There are countless of metaphors I could create to express how much you mean to me, but the one idea I haven’t quite put into words is this; when there’s a warm breeze brushing against my skin, there could be a storm tearing down the trees in your backyard. While Florida’s gust of wind is messing up my hair or calming down my anxiety for the night, a Texas thunderstorm is tearing your house apart, and the reason for your last breath. And now the trees in your backyard aren’t the only thing the storm tore apart, but my heart too with every grain of faith left in me. The Florida wind isn’t going to mess up my hair this time, but the Texas catastrophe will mess up my mind and the love we once shared from a distance. A person’s last breath and the narrative of it has never been more important to me. Thoughts rid me of sleep when this is what they whisper; the detestation of the miles between us only multiplying, wishing it was you whispering sweet nothings only inches between us instead. Wanting your fingertips brushing against my skin instead of the breeze in the middle of the night. There are too many moments I long to, not have sun kissed skin, but my skin kissed by you instead. I just pray the trees stay in your backyard and you become the reason my hair is a mess because I’m tired of giving the credit to this dreaded Florida wind.

When I was younger, my biggest desire was to travel.
Dreaming of swimming with dolphins in the Amazon River.
Dreaming of floating away to the Niagara Falls.
Dreaming of running all of the United States.
Dreaming bigger dreams than Martin Luther King, Jr could ever.
Maybe even go away in a hot air balloon until boredom struck.
See the highest peaks of the Earth, maybe until I’ve reached the gates of Heaven.
Have brunch with the President of the United States, or with a beggar I come across with on my journeys.
When I was younger, my wishes were beyond my reach
God’s angels seemed closer than my dreams could ever be.
And so, I made contact with one of God’s angels, as I floated on the cloud of my imagination.
This angel had brown eyes; hair fell perfectly every time
Perfection came to this angel without ever trying.
I fell for this angel faster than Lucifer fell from the glory of God, it was so unplanned and perfect.
Unplanned and perfect.
That was this angel’s method to everything in life:
Unplanned. Perfect.
Everything he did was unplanned and perfect.
It was… spontaneous.
He was spontaneous.
He was perfect.
The way he didn’t think about anything too much, and just did everything. Only thinking about things twice – or so it seemed. The way he didn’t have a planning sheet for life, he just wrote whatever came to his mind, like me. Except he didn’t write, he acted upon his thoughts. I literally write everything that comes to mind. But this angel? He acted. The finest actor that ever descended from Heaven.
Now, the perfection of his beauty leaves me speechless every time, making me a mime of some sort. The perfection of his beauty is marvelous, I just don’t know how to put it into words. All I can say is that, with this angel I’ve fallen for, I am somehow satisfied. Somehow, all the dreams I’ve been yearning for so long are brought to life at last.
The words he speaks flow perfectly - I promise you, I could swim in them. The ease of his tone makes me feel like I’m swimming in the Niagara Falls. Oh, and that laugh is so sweet and just as cute as the dolphins in that Amazon River I had wished to swim with.
He makes me feel like I’m running more than just the United States of America. This amazing angel gives me an adrenaline rush… I could run miles and miles. To him. To hug him. To kiss him. To get high off of his touch and feel oblivious.
God sent me the best transportation to the Gates of Heaven.
And this transportation is the most spontaneous and perfect.
This spontaneous piece of perfection is the best adventure, and I’m so ready to have brunch every day with that marvelous angel God sent.

Her ribs crackled, in the skeleton night.
And I remember my mouth on hers,
where atomic fish hooks attached our lips.
Where there was nothing like kissing
like our God wasn't dead.

She was accused of killing a taxi driver
in the Brazilian underbelly.
Smoking a cigarette, she dropped it on the ground,
spat on it, and crushed it with her bare foot,
saying she fell in love with the way
his sleep-drenched body lay.

And I told her to stay home.
And I told her that they'd find her.
But she didn't stay home.
And they did find her.

Chasing her through the Babylon brush,
insults were thrown and so were balloons of gasoline.
Each pink, yellow, and green vessel floated in the air, as an internal opera heightened.
And sour splashes spread across her body,
as she fled from the vigilante mob.

The children danced along the panoramic horizon she ran beside,
laughing, pointing, singing.
The slumbering sorrow of the situation became evident,
and she started to feel the calm of fleeting life.

Her dreams aborted and her ideals became fallacies,
and with the sound of fuzzy motors in the background, her heart leapt and her feet slipped.

Rope ate into her, wrapping her like the orphaned recklessness of each set of eyes that painted her.
She squirmed amongst the cheers.
She cried with every thrown beer and balloon.
The empty-eyed males gang ***** her.
The women covered the children's eyes,
and the children tried to move their mothers' hands.

And I pushed my way through the crowd.
And I saw her smothered in blood, beer, and gasoline.
I wanted to halt the hurricane that destroyed morality.
But I am a coward.
Frozen by my fear, I, too, am a murderer.
And a murderer I'll always be,
for the burning of all that was good.

Sudden flames soared towards the sky.
Laughter escaped as molotov cocktails exploded onto her body.
Her head turned towards the crowd,
as flames scampered across her face.
I saw in her, what I never saw before,
which was the human race.