"the longest i have ever gone without showering,"
i tell the group of pre-teen boys
who are staring up at me,
"is two and a half weeks."
they're old enough to be disgusted
because they're old enough to know how often one should shower
but they're still young enough that it
inspires some awe among them.
i don't tell them anything else,
just let them believe that it was simply
me being good at avoiding a persistent mother's reminding.
and im going to let you
pretend that it has nothing to do with the nights that i
spent staring up and my ceiling
wondering how difficult it would be
to just--

Don’t love me.
Please, don’t love me.
I know myself, we’re quite close actually, and let me tell you, you don’t want to fall for her,
you don’t want that girl, I hate her.
I hate her because I know her so well and I know how horrible the truth can smell.
Don’t love me, because even I know to hate myself,
the vanity that despite this loathing I might actually believe that someone could fall for me.
Don’t love me.
Don’t love me, because I met Heartbreak once and she left me gasping for air
and I will never meet her again.
I refuse, so if you love me, please be aware that when you do,
some day I am going to leave you, battered and bruised, because
twisted self-preservation has taught me all the tricks to keep myself afloat by drowning you.
Don’t love me.
Because as much as I will love you, I’m not friends with Commitment,
and whenever I see him on the horizon I set off running in the opposing direction.
I will treat you like there will be no oxygen unless I’m holding you,
but when you’re the one reaching for my hand I’ll become the wind.
Commitment is not my friend, I said, but no one listens.
Don’t love me, because I am a tornado, a storm to chase until I’ve taken everything from you.
Don’t love me.
Someday, you will be married and happy, and I will
whirl back into your life like the hurricane that has never been named after me, and
you will believe that all your scars
and your broken heart
have healed enough that you can run with me.
But I have razors between my fingers and wedged in my teeth,
and your scabbed over heartstrings will be powerless against me.
I am an expert at running, at hurting, at ‘maybe’s.
Don’t love me.
When you ask me for something more,
I will tell you that I am not ready, because I never will be.
Chances scare me, and trusting someone so much will always be risky.
I will tell you that I am not in the right place for your Commitment,
for your future Heartbreak,
and you will tell me that you understand but you’ll stick with me,
and fire will consume everything.
Don’t love me.
I can’t even go a few years with a friendship before
burning it all for at least a few evenings, but we’ll always rebuild the
rickety ashes of the bridges we’ve passed.
Don’t love me.
I’m only saying it for your safety.

the red moon makes me miss you

…
… …
see,
im struggling to even write poetry these days.
everything
is like taking a deep breath only to find out that you’ve actually been
trapped inside a void and there’s nothing in your lungs
and nothing to exhale.
id like to think that i still have my good days
and really, i do,
its just that they get kind of fuzzy when im stuck in afternoon sunlight
wondering what happened to all the people that are usually around me.
i feel like a ghost in my own home
and driving ten over the speed limit doesnt even make the
bitter black box in my chest beat,
so maybe ill push fifteen--
and suddenly,
im going fifty-five in a thirty-five zone because maybe itll make me feel alive
knowing how fast im going away from the buildings that makes me feel
like a ghost,
like im drifting.
maybe the less i eat the better ill feel,
but either way theres some kind of guilt weighing me down,
cement blocks tossed into a lake.
i cut my hair to lighten up,
and its been at least three weeks
since i wrote a bad space metaphor about a boy
with a galaxy smile and, ****.
there goes that, restart the count.
fifty-five miles per hour away from memories that
my mind twists into negativity at eleven-- both evening and morning, really.
fifty-five miles per hour away from the people that might just
make me feel alive again,
but fifty-five miles per hour away from the places that thin me out until im nothing more than
a cartoon ghost outline,
running from pac man.

i am the kind of kid
who when i think of birthdays i think
eighteen instead of twenty one.

i have been wanting to vote since before
it ever even occurred to me to look forward to ***** shots.

so fast forward to 2015, gearing up to the 2016 presidential race
and guess who of all people is in first place?
donald trump.

and it’s funny
because i had an argument with a friend the other day
over the importance of voting.
politics? he says he just doesn’t care.
  
he doesn’t understand.
ignorance is not a luxury we can all afford.

donald trump is not funny.
he is far too scary and far too real to simply be a caricature.
make no mistake, donald trump doesn’t care for people like my father,
whether they’re here legally or not.
donald trump doesn’t care for people like me,
whether we were born here or not.
his compassion ends within a five mile
range of the the rio grande
and donald trump wants to “make america great again”
by building walls around us to keep anyone south of the border out.
donald trump wants to run this country like a corporation
with the HR department cut.

make no mistake, donald trump is not funny.
donald trump is not funny,
he is terrifying.
he is reminiscent of a past we cannot afford to repeat.

apathy is not a luxury we can all afford.  
remember: we are responsible for our own ignorance
we are just much of what we put into this world
as we are what we take
out of it.

if we don't like who is playing god
and we don’t like the way he pulls the strings,
we have to remember who handed him the bible
so he could swear himself in.

you're like the moon:
stay 238,900 miles away from me.
you're like the sun:
if you get any closer, you'll set me on fire
you're like pluto,
who i wish orbited the sun more frequently than you.
(at least it has a heart, even if it's an icefield.)
you're like jupiter,
surrounded by moons vying for your eyes,
smaller than me and not 365,000,000 miles away.
you're like the earth:
i don't want to be around you any longer than i have to.
you're like the earth:
someday i'll get away from you.
you're like the earth:
bad habits might be destroying you,
but there are beautiful details that keep me looking at you.
you're like gravity:
i don't really understand you,
but i'm stuck with you.
you're like a black hole,
and i'm a stupid planet stuck in the galaxy that surrounds you.
you're like a bad space metaphor,
in that we always find ourselves back here.

good artists copy, great artists steal,
and the best artists reinvent what they’re stolen.
so don’t think of it as stealing,
think of it as borrowing.
everyone who has ever created anything
puts out something new for future generations
to leave their fingerprints all over.
and i’m hoping for a change in the weather,
rearrange my life into something better
frankenstein a poem in an a love letter.
all us poets, we've all been writing the same old things.
we're just regurgitated, agitated,
trying to say something that hasn't already been said.
but i've heard every story follows the same seven plot lines.
all stories are the same narrative essentially
but all stories are still worth telling.
no idea is original
but there are ideas worth being repeated, reinvented.
so i steal from the greats, piggy-backing off the shoulders of giants
and borrowing from my betters
in hopes to better myself and them.
legacies exist because of people taking great things
and continuing to strive to make them greater.
legacies exist because they are given away
to everyone who hears them,
kept alive by tongues and hands and hearts.
when you write you are contained inside yourself.
but when i am here,
when i am on this stage, i am uncontained and free;
i’ve given myself away to all of you.
the thing about art is that once you put it out there
it doesn’t belong just to you anymore.
i’ve got just as much ownership over my favorite song
as the person who wrote it does because i feel just strongly about it.
i’m writing poems for people i’ve never met
i’m writing a love letter that i’ll wake only to forget.
so i think it's funny people call writing solitary.
it's funny to me that people call
the purest form of communication in art a lonely pursuit.
because i think really most writers are just trying to use what we're best
at as an intermediary, a middle man,
trying to make a connection with someone.
every writer has written something down
and hoped desperately that someone a hundred years from now,
someone on the other side of the world
will feel something when they read what they’ve written.
it’s funny.
most people think that writing, that poems,
are something i do instead of something i am;
taking away my words would be like taking away my bones.
i have a deep, passionate need to be heard
so i will scream until someone tells me they are listening,
until someone tells me to shut the **** up
because i cannot imagine a time when the untameable need
to tell stories, to string together fragments of poetry,
will not be bursting out of my veins.
something is not real until i write it down.
so we take photos as the titanic sinks.
we pull out our phones as the twin towers fall, call everyone we know.
what else would we do? just watch it go down silently?
i think the most basic of human instincts is the urge to communicate.
to make people understand
our love, our joy, our anger, our tragedy.
we are just spectators to the tragedy, guilty bystanders to the crime;
we have front row seats to the end of the world.
and when the sky is falling
you know we’ll all be calling each other saying,
“you’ll never believe what is happening.
i don’t know how to explain it,
but i’m going to try.”