And you find yourself
In the throes of madness

Surrounded by warm, warm bodies

Yet still
Entirely alone.

Every time
I feel my veins begin to rush
And the slow throb of pain begin to pulse

            I will stop,
           And I will stay the flow

Until I have means
To channel it
Through paper and ink.

It would take me 230 hours to walk from the spot
where you first told me you'd like to be my partner
to the place where,
nearly eight months later,
you apologized
for breaking my heart.

Two-hundred and thirty hours.

According to my calculations,
which I etched in my new writing pad,
I have one-hundred and one poems left until I reach my total.

If I write a poem each day,
it will take me almost three-and-a-half more months
before your vision
is faded from my memory, and by that time
it will almost be December
when your birthday falls,
and I'll have to start over.

And that time is not counting
old photographs re-surfacing,
the pain of knowing I've been erased,
or chance encounters on our campus, see

I have been eliminated twice now
by women who I have loved like nothing else
and I'm beginning to fear
that something is wrong with my love, that I am too potent
or terrifying
to have success.

I want someone to leave me,
and leave me well; I want to be able to call them
when I am sick, or alone, or dying of desperation,
when I have lost my home or someone in my family,
and vice versa.

I want someone to feel the same small attachment and desire
to still cultivate my well-being
as I do
for those whose voices I no longer hear in my sleep.

The raindrops re-arrange themselves
Into dreary patterns on my window.

Morphing into snowflakes,
They crystallize
In the gray dawn.

I'm going to miss
Having winters with you.

Today I have

Cried until my tears blistered,
Watched my heart sink into the dust

What do I do with the nudes on my phone

Now that I view them, nostalgic,

Alone?

I fell in love with an actress

and she didn't know

when to step off the stage.

These days,

Everyone I talk to
Is a Sagittarius
And I am terrified

Of each of them

There’s not much more we could have done.
Stack the chairs up to the ceiling,
brace ourselves for a revolution.

This indecision is nothing new.

Agree, oppose

For better or for worse- et tu?

Nothing feels the way it should.
Drifting between protests,
unsure of what to believe in
with different fists
raised at these young demons.

I used to think
that I was unqualified
to say such things.

But then,
a professor of mine
encouraged the seething hum
within me
to boil to a roar
and so-

These are the facts
I’ve uncovered.

Our country’s countrymen
were not from the West.

They were here,
on this patch of land,
making their own.

When the others arrived,
led by the witchery
they seized what they could find,
butchered,
murdered,
brought the land to its knees with war
and feasted on its flesh.

Our big ol’ U.S. of A stands on the bones and weary shoulders
of an indigenous people
we have been made to ignore
or mislabel as “savage”
almost unwittingly-

Prey, all of us
in the jaws of a Capitalist agenda

When you touch me
sometimes time stands still
and sometimes it rushes.

I often can't tell
which is which.

You're either electrifying me
or cooling me down,
or both (?)

Flip my switches,
peel back my hardened layers
to see how the pistons
move inside me

the impetuous blood
streaming through my veins

See, taste, take all you want
from my slim pickings,
unraveled from crowds before you,

but still, they're there.

And though I don't have much to offer,
I'd love to offer it to you.

Today I came

And did not scream your name

Nor give it the breath of whispers

Hello,

Lately my poetry has been shifting and taking new shapes. Instead of my typical, drawn-out style of editing and composing, I'm now limiting myself to the following rules:

1. Only write when you need to, and write as soon as you need to
2. Edit minimally - only three revisions per poem
3. Feel a lot.

Additionally, I've embarked on a journey to cope with loss, writing a total of 157 love poems (or rather, emotionally charged poems). The goal is that the final poem's completion will also bring the advent of my catharsis.

It's my hope that these vignettes will provide you an authentic and rough window into my own urban and dazzlingly hellish experiences.

All the best,
Sam

I'm aware that our drinking might be damaging
to our livers, but
there's something amazing about seeing ourselves
without filters.

The pull you described-
I thought it was imaginary
as I'm not the best judge of my own character
and when you met me, I thought I was a *******.

Sometimes, I still think I'm a *******.

But you've molded me
into something far better,
a form I am proud to inhabit,
a soul I enjoy feeding
and feeling inside me.

Yes, you're an inspiration
and yes, your form and mind keep me awake
at night, imagining
possibilities-

ways to kiss you, adore you, be a better man for you -

(and yes,
I gendered myself

partially because you've made me realize
that my Self is a canon
of hope for others like me
and that I should cherish it)

There's nothing more precious to me
than waking up next to you,
feeling your eyelashes flutter
against my cheek as we rise,
procrastinating leaving our bed
because it's warm and inviting-

or feeling your breath in my ear
as you tell me your stories,
secrets
that I won't ever mention
to anyone-

You'll have everything I can give
in my emotional reserve.

You'll have my joy, pain, oblivion
and all in between.

You'll have time, love, patience, faith,
whatever you need,
my love,
ask
and it shall be granted

When I am with you,

My smile can blaze

And my muscles

Contort themselves into positions

I never imagined possible

Yesterday in a court of law,
I was called a Sir.

I carried on the proud lineage
Of men before me,
Who fought and died for their country
And loved without abandon.

Pasta makers, butcher's boys,
Painters, and writers.
I claimed my place among the ranks,

One I had dreamed of
As a child,
Staring into the face
Of my great-grandfather
And his father before him.

Don't you dare blame any of this
On my star sign,
Or yours,
You are just as culpable

For breaking,
Tormenting
And leaving

When I was young,
they took me to a beach
more pristine than the handprints of a god.

I regretted each of my footprints
upon the pearly sand,
my touches seemed to taint
its flesh.

The whispers of the air forbade me
to leap into the steely ocean
and shed my skin-

The waving of the pirate’s trees
kept me grounded.

"GIRLS OWN THE VOID," the text reads.

I am not a girl,
And yet I, too
Wish to plunge into nothingness -

Can I hold your hand and join you when you next return?

Outside, accusations float past my narrow shoulders
And shudder across the concrete.

"GIRLS OWN THE VOID.

Back off, *******. We are home."

I am slowly desensitizing

Myself to the word

"Babe"

She is always looking behind her
To see what she's dropped
Out of fear,

I do the same
Out of curiosity.

We've smashed against one another,
Desperate to connect but unaware
There was a simpler answer
To our misconceptions

Disclaimer:

You're sexting a poet

Next to you
I slow my breathing
To memorize the rhythm of yours,
Which calms me from the memory
Of nightmares

I was always
The first person awake at the sleepover;

Maybe one or two girls awoke
But everyone returned to rest with ease
Except me -

I've long been looking for things to fill those spaces
Between sleep and wakefulness ;

I had never considered
Writing to you

You know what it's like to sleep beside me
And wake up to my morning breath, you know
What it's like to sink yourself into my depths,
Together
You and I know everything.

A woman once told me
I was an open book with tattered pages and
I do not think I can agree with this, but
Whatever kind of book I am, you
Have taken the time to learn me
And sift through every page
Marking and highlighting
Your favorite passages
With your clay-stained, summer hands.

You have seen the rivers of light run through my eyes
And you know that I grew up without a family, live without a home, and
While you understand these things you also know
That they are not why my love for you
Is so strong, and I cannot thank you enough
For knowing that.

When your hands meet my flesh, they are not surprised that it is startled by itself
And take the time to soothe
The fearful currents running through it
Back to sleep.

When your eyes meet mine, I'm reminded that
I have never felt so familiar
In another person's gaze.

You ground me, rescue me from chaos on occasion by reminding me
That it is never too late to be new-

And I ought to slow down my hurtling mind
More often than I do
To tell you this,
And write to thank you.

Their healthy trans-ness
in the face of my own desolate relationship
made me sad

and thorny

but so, so happy for them
and their ability to thrive

Blank skin begging to be touched says,

"kissing you is like eating stardust, and,

I'll crawl to the corners of your earth if you let me.

In the middle of things, while you are away,

please save me an honest smile?"

We were born
Out of chaos
Wind and rain shaped us

I held you for the first time
After a fight with a woman, I
Needed you to know how impossible you were
To do without

We died out
In the chaos
The winds that chastised us
Whisked you away from me

Yours was the arrival

I did not know

I was anticipating

The crimes of my heart are swift and brutal.

Tell me again
you find masochism attractive,
and I’ll show you
true devotion

You don't know weird until

You're brushing your teeth in a Starbucks bathroom
And using the sink
To wash yourself
At 9 in the morning, you don't

Know pain until your space has been shattered,
You don't

Know isolation until those who have needed you
Abandon you when
Their help can't be lost, you

Don't know critical condition
Until you've suffered all the wounds you can take

You don't know rejection
Until your spirit bleeds out
And you live from a bag

This poem must be heard
With eyes closed,
Chest open,
And blood coursing through
Untold chasms, it must

Be felt and reverberate
Across every vessel inside
Your expansive brain

It's interesting to read your older poems because
You see the shifts in voice and tone and think,

*I was in this pain before,
perhaps worse,
and I survived

This man I don't know
stopped me in a room full of paintings,
asked me if I knew that
Helonias was having an ******

as she clutched the head
of John the Baptist
and pierced the tongue
that spoke against her-

I had always thought
the woman was mourning.

Her face seemed contorted
in statuesque grief,
but, no -

She was *******
as she mutilated
the first cousin of Christ.

How, strange, how brutal
a thing to know.

You've gone home now,

Departed on your bike in your baseball cap

And I can still feel
The echo of you on my skin

There will be a digital trace

Of this in the morning,
And I will know
That I was alive

How I wish that I was small like you, that
my chest had less room
to expand when broken

and my mind less chatter
for me to pay heed to

This body has been cultivated
For centuries,
Sculpted
With strength in mind.

Watch it all tremble
And melt in your arms
As you cradle me
And tell me lies

We are hiding things.

Secrets looped around the roots of our teeth,
nestled under our tongues,
sliding down our esophagus

Winding their way throughout our rib cage,
inching towards our hearts

You weren't my muse.

I wrote love poems to you,
Not about you,

And there's a difference.

I cradled my words alone,
They did not need your touch
To thrive

I was immersed in you

For a hot moment

Until the rains came

And when the fog lifted,

I was rebirthed

And sank

We both have kind eyes,
And are growing
In our separate ways
And that is
Oddly comforting to me

I am migrating between two worlds,

and learning to do it swiftly

We retreat into the same spaces,
hands in our hair,
blood in our laps.

Curtained by terror in our respective rooms
waiting to soothe the aches in our bones.

We say that we’re warriors,
that no one under this sun can touch us

But what about unions,
what about others?

On the day you left me
The wine hit my chest
As soon as I woke.

The skies opened up and wept

How fitting

So,
My shirts are ragged and I
Drink too much on many occasions and I
Often reek of cigarettes and untold lies and I
Can't seem to keep myself steady for more than a minute but
I

Can write a love poem that'll make you go to pieces
And I
Will calculate the distance to the stars and find out how to launch you there
And I
Won't rest until I see it completed.

Sure, I
Can't control a sentence for more than a few words and I
Barely know my thoughts and I
Am a rambling, insecure mess and I
Don't know where I came from, but
I

Can help you find a home here amongst the shadows,
And bellow out your name so it infinitely echoes

Wow.

I have found out
That someone brutalized you
And as much as it pains
And confuses me to say -

That terrifies me.

If you separate
                                  yourself


From


            yourself,

You become an anomaly.

I've been using my computer's HDMI chord to connect to a T.V. in order to game, but I've never written poetry on it.

The magnification of the words and the fluidity of the transfer from keyboard to screen is magnificent.

It's giving a kind of otherworldly, surreal feeling to the pieces I'm creating.