I DON'T WRITE LETTERS, JUST POEMS
BUT IF THIS IS AN OPEN LETTER THEN IT'S GOT THE ADDRESS
OF ALL YOUR HIDEOUTS, ALL YOUR GHOST TOWNS
TATTOOED ON IT

SO ******* FOR ALL THAT WE'VE BEEN THROUGH
I FEEL LIKE I LEFT ALL MY PIECES IN YOUR BEDROOM,
THERE'S NO PEACE HERE IN MY HEAD
LAST TIME I SAW YOU I FELT LIKE I RELAPSED
BACK INTO MY BEST BAD HABIT
I’M SO ******* STUPID, SWORE I WOULDN’T BUT I’M A LIAR

PAST BEHAVIOR IS THE BEST INDICATOR OF FUTURE BEHAVIOR
AND IF YOU'VE BEEN AN ADDICT,
I'VE HEARD YOU'RE ALWAYS GOING TO BE ADDICT
EVEN WHEN YOU'RE CLEAN
I'VE HEARD THAT YOU'RE ALWAYS GOING TO BE
ITCHING FOR SOMETHING
SO DOES IT MAKE ANY SENSE WHEN I SAY
I THINK I LOVE YOU AGAIN?

I THINK THAT'S A GOOD METAPHOR
BECAUSE WE DIDN'T HAVE A LOVE LIKE NURSERY RHYMES
AT OUR BEST WE WERE A HORROR STORY,
AT OUR WORST WE WERE JUST AN ALLEGORY
AND THE SUN FELL IN LOVE WITH THE MOON
WHAT A ******* TRAGEDY, LOVERS WHO COULD NEVER BE
LOVERS WHO COULD NEVER EXIST
AT THE SAME TIME AND PLACE,
ALWAYS PASSING EACH OTHER BY LIKE SHIPS IN THE NIGHT
EXCEPT I'M NOT THE SUN
AND YOU'RE SURE AS HELL NOT THE MOON
WE'RE MORE LIKE COMETS ONLY DESTINED TO COLLIDE
AND CHIP EACH OTHER'S SHOULDERS
ON OUR WAY OUT THE DOOR
AND IF WE WERE A SHIP THEN WE WERE A SINKING ONE
SO WHY DO I FEEL LIKE THE TITANIC WITHOUT YOU?
TRYING TO BAIL MYSELF OUT
I DIDN'T THINK THIS IS WHAT LOVE
WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT
AND YOU KNOW WE HAD IT COMING LIKE A TRAIN EN ROUTE
INESCAPABLE,
I'M ABLE TO SEE LIKE HINDSIGHT IS 20/20
BUT I SWEAR I NEVER SAW A BETTER VISION THAN YOU

AND I THINK I'M A LITTLE SCARED THAT YOU'LL ALWAYS BE
IN THE BACK OF MY HEAD, AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS,
HIDDEN EVERY POEM I EVER WRITE
I'M SO SORRY THAT EVERY SONG ON THE RADIO
FEELS LIKE IT'S ABOUT US
YOUR VOICE  USED TO CRACK ON ALL THE HIGH NOTES
YOU'RE STILL THE BEST THING I'VE EVER HEARD

AND THIS IS A STORY THAT'S ALREADY BEEN WRITTEN
PLAGIARIZATION OF MY OWN DREAMS
I THINK THINGS ARE JUST AS OFTEN WHAT THEY SEEM
AS THEY AREN'T
AND I THINK SOMETIMES ANGRY IS JUST A STYLISTIC CHOICE
BECAUSE BEING SAD IS PLAYED OUT

Words flow from
electric sparks
emitting ink thoughts from a
metaphorical heart.
Silence
reigns but for the
melody of an earbud anthem and the
tap of a pencil,
a nonexistent word for a nonexistent standstill.
Footsteps
echo on loop
and voices resume
empty conversations for
another
empty
day.
Earbuds tangle,
a metaphor bigger than these
words can convey:
fold
into a loop, one end
twisting around thrice,
tucking under to
pull.
The cold,
the monotony,
the burden of walking a world that
recently became
so dull,
so black and white.
Count the stars as they
count the cars that
count the red lights on
subzero nights,
a flip of a single silver dime
as
thoughts become optical illusions displaying desire for
less-troubled times.
Voices ring out in a
false symphony
as a
street-corner Jesus has an epiphany
of
color
and sound to
entice the audience
with its ambience.
A phone rings and
the operator claims that
help is on the way,
but
the victim is all alone because,
no,
nobody came
as the water rose higher and
the flames became
guilt and blame
for a long-ago sin
that
no one remembers being involved in,
The tide keeps
coming until the sparks are
silenced
and the brain is tamed by elegance lost
after the first verse.

A four-year-old was perched in front of
a boxy TV with eyes only open to
sugar-coated Cheerios and 80’s Transformer heroes
on the screen.
Fast forward to age
thirteen where she flipped through
dusty photography with
eyes searching
for substance
to prove reality from almost-forgotten dreams.
Scrapbook memories aren’t
all that she sees
because,
honestly,
she loses things.
Summer Saturdays and
Fall Fridays and
Winter weekdays spent too wrapped up in her
own head to notice, silently, spring rising
from its deathbed.
Honestly, she loses things.
She
loses
things that should be important
and real, but all she can feel is
the guilt of lost
and faded photography.
Scrapbook memories fabricate times of
color and scent and sound,
of spilled milk and Diet Coke,
of words too far gone to seep from
pen to page because
honestly,
she loses things.

She talks like ‘finally got up to 103’ and
I’m like, c’mon, girl, keep eating, you aren’t as healthy as you should be, and
He talks like ‘back 60
pounds ago’ and
I’m like, dude, rad, just keep eating healthy.
But like,
There’s this sick sort of jealousy.
I mean, she’s guilty when she’s too small for her jeans while
I’m guilty when I wish it was me
See, sometimes I try starving,
Just to see…

I don’t have an eating disorder:
Ask my mother,
I just have a small appetite.
And I don’t need therapy,
Because it’s scratches not scars that cover me.
I’m not a cutter but pass me a lighter—
I don’t like razors but I do play with fire,
And I’d like to burn these thoughts and watch the smoke drift
Higher
Higher
Higher,
Until the sky opens up and swallows me,
Like I swallow more pills than necessary.
The painkillers keep my nerves numb and dead,
But do nothing for the bundles of nerves in my head.
I want to be empty.
I want to be emptier physically
Than the emptiness of my mentality.
I’m starving
In my head,
Because physically I’m doing just fine.
I’m walking the line
Between average
And a little less
And a little less
And a little less.
I’m misery at its best because
Its best is nothing, and I
Am nothing.
(Or at least,
I wish to be.)

I can’t really say whether or not you have stars in your eyes, but I would like to formally inform you that galaxies reside in your smiles. Yeah, I know, pupils create parallels to black holes and irises of all hues can, when looked deeply upon, create constellations and similarities to stars long since dead, but
I don’t really think much about your eyes, their shade or their size, because I’m too busy basking in the sunshine that is your ever-present smile. You’re happy. You’re a child of light, and the sun can only ever be swallowed by eyes so you must stare-- how else could you ingest enough electromagnetic waves to radiate more than our residential system star? You’re a flower, synthesizing and using outer space to create the kind of sugar that must somehow be contagious, ‘cause here I am, feeling sickeningly, disgustingly sweet.
I find myself a kindred spirit of the ocean, because we are both called by the motion of the moon, but you are called by the stars. I’m a moonbeam to your sunshine, just a reflection of your spectrum but at least you’re helping me shine.
I didn’t intend to write poetry about you, but you’re so set on resetting my negative mindsetting sun that I can’t find the energy to get angry about the twelve million tangible social issues that currently control this century life. I’m a creature of night yet somehow I’ve started to look forward to long days of sunshine, and it might have something to do with the nickname I’ve given you, Sunshine.
So, yeah, you have galaxies in your smiles-- but those galaxies have stars that flood up to your eyes, because there are universes in your lungs and black holes in your brain swallowing up the negative space, which is a paradox to say but you’re full of those, aren’t you? Your veins are made of stardust that came from wishes prayed up to ***** of gases and energy that are actually too many light years away for the words to ever reach. We watch the stars silently because it’s just a funeral procession, a speck in space that once had possession over life and creation but is now dead. The stars are all dead. We’re looking into the past, the real tangible past, because that star right there, 42 light years away, is a reflection not of today but rather 1973. That star right there, 42 light years away, has since changed and is living in a future that we will never quite see.
I’m never going to read this to you, okay? Because for all I know, in 42 days I will be writing poetry while picturing a different face and people are less like the sun and more like the phases of the moon, just a circle of change. We will never see what all those stars look like currently, because we will never be able to see more than a few seconds into what is seconds away from being history. I mean, the sun that we see when we leave this building is already 8.3 light minutes behind its appearance presently. We will never see it die because we will always be 8.3 minutes behind, and that terrifies me.
It’s the fear that you’re trying to shine out of me, though, so just promise me that you’ll keep smiling.

loneliness is easy.

*being alone is the worst thing.

Sometimes, I wish I had cameras in my eyes so we could look back on these moments and hold them and you could see how you made them golden.
Someone in the future could put my life on the screen,
cut scenes when I go to sleep, special behind-the-scenes of us making these memories
and I could just delete the ones I didn't want to keep.
I would never lose a second.
If my life was a piece of cinematic genius then I might try harder to keep this up:
I'd adjust my angles,
I'd check my volume,
I'd have the perfect songs to sing along to and everyone would buy the soundtrack CD,
if they were
just like me.

But you aren't.
See, I had a better opening verse but when my mind is made up of rhythm and rhyme, everything that isn't written down gets driven away in a ******* metaphorical hearse, the kind that you aren't allowed to ride in yet.
Your job isn't finished until mine is,
car crash collisions, underwater violence, silence, broken heart strings strung on a violin and a bass drum keeping us up to speed. See?
I'm a mash up of bad one-line poems and I'm not slowing down, not for anybody.
I've seen angels with broken halos and featherless wings, trying
so hard to fly but they're as successful as that extinct little kiwi,
who all died trying to fly but, hey, at least they went down swinging because we're
all
slaves
to gravity.
So these angels find spaces in their minds to curl up and sleep.
You've got your body on autopilot and don't you find it exhausting, to just stop trying?

Let's get back to the movie.
By then, we'll be living to infinity, like, for real, not just a symbol on the skin but a time to live.
Immortality.
So watching me breathe will be nothing in the wasteland of time that they will have to waste--
not currently, no, because currently our lives seem so short especially with empty promises of infinities and galaxies and light years away on another inhabited planet a kid like me is saying the exact same things because
there's no more originality,
not in this space,
not in the void of immortality.
And in My Life As A Movie, they'll see me:
standing in the street with you, holding hands and praising bands and feeling alive again,
because now we're aware--
of the angles,
of the volume,
of the sets and costumes,
of the film and the video rules
that I learned in high school.
Now that we know it's all a big production, we'll ruin the show.
Our voices will be whispers or shouts and the microphones will be too scratchy to catch what we're saying.
Our feet will fly like the angels once could, ruining any chance of an easy shoot.
My memories of you
are golden,
and I'd sell my mortality just to keep a good hold on them but I can't.
I don't want to.
Infinities are found throughout our galaxy,
but my only real infinity is you.
You, like a scratched DVD that sometimes slips off the screen because
we have our rough times, too.

I sometimes find myself wishing I had cameras in my eyes,
but then I think I'd rather be blind
so no one else sees you like I do.

The world isn't ready for that yet.