Thoughts I have while writing poems.
I can’t write poems with the lights on, like having *** after a meal.
I can’t write poems in silence, like ******* when my roommates are home.
Like putting your hand over my mouth and over my ***. Like planting kisses on my neck and letting me melt into your lap.
I can’t write love poems, like making love with a ***** playing in the back ground.
Like looking into your eyes while you hold your callused fingers inside of me, like looking into your souls and being blinded by your hair.
I can’t write poems unless the muse grabs me by my neck, all my best poems came after he did.
And after he left, and he left, and she left, and he left, and he left.
I try not to write poems about you, I wish I had written more before I realized how stupid you are. Like I should have written about how you drunkenly serenaded me with Sinatra.
How you taught my tongue to tolerate the taste of gin. I should have written more kind words before they started huddling around me in masses and causing me to create something with malice.
I can only write poems about people I hate, like spitting in your open mouth.
Like letting you **** me. Like letting you fight me. Like letting your tiny fingers find every piece of me and try to preserve them in jars.
I can’t write poems with the lights on, like making love to your memory.
I can’t write poems in silence, like looking at my naked body in the mirror.
I can’t look at myself the same way since you touched me.
Like I am a piece on contraband, like my skin is stale.
I can’t write poems alone. Like kissing her in the snow.
I can’t keep building fortresses like this, like keeping her at arms-length.

Sometimes I wish I was uglier, like I wish I had pins and needles sticking out of my skin.
I wish my face was riddled with scares from pimples and my dimples had shiny silver rods in them that scraped against the inside of my mouth every time I smiled.
The first time I fell in the snow it was down the hill. My limbs slipped from under me like a rug being pulled up to be cleaned and I tumbled into the snow and the ice. I felt my body give up on me and surrender to the pain I imagined the jeering faces of the drivers passing me by, I felt broken and busted but I felt alive.
Sometimes I wish I had seven heads. One to tell you all the beautiful things I think about you, another to spit spirtitual lingos and recite bingo numbers, and another to remind me of world hunger and why I should eat more and that I shouldn’t shrivel my body like dried grapes, another to remind me that the word for dried grapes are raisins, another to give me a reason to keep it together another to help me take it all apart. And the last two would constantly bicker, bringing out the bitter in me and the philosophy major in my mind who can’t seem to find time to put pen to paper and think about life living and longing, I am longing to feel like I am meant to belong somewhere.
But on the other hand, or head rather – I want to be an outlier. I want to be a liar. I want to tell ugly people they are beautiful. I want to let the hopeless know that there will be another sunrise I want to tell her she’s going to live right before she dies because I am so desperate to make people smile I will twist myself into the prettiest sounding lies, don’t tell me this is selfish. Don’t harp on me for wanting to have people accept me when the unaccepted are getting murdered. Don’t put a gun to my head and then tell me to be true to myself because the trigger will go off.
Sometimes I wish I was bigger, never very loudly – I want to be a dragon. I want to breathe fire on the ones who have hurt me I want to fill my lungs with gasoline I want to line up the firing squad and survive them I want to believe I am worth more than the labels; more than the fables they tell about “my kind of people.” I want to rise above the bullies and the torture chambers I want to be able to write poetry without being on the brink of tears I want to spring forth new ideas.
I want my ears to grow to the size of tree trunks. I want to be able to hear the earth while she cries out for mercy I want to close my eyes and see the thousands of tiny lies we tell each other each day. I want to bleed, open and wounded. I want to hold rage and love in both hands I want to take a stand and
I want to be able to love again. I want to be able to cry when she moves me, I am not a mountain I am not a dragon I am just a man. I am brutally honest and I can’t caress away the cold truths this world will give you but I can grant you a million kisses. I can send you well wishes, I can call you caring and smart. I can remind you that things have been hard and they will likely get harder. I can be with you when they do and I promise, I can hold onto you.

She says the best revenge is being able to say “you are gone and I am fine.” That in time all love passes in one door and out another and that there will be another and I look at her and sigh and I can feel her love as it passes me by.
I saw you at the bus stop today. I held my head high and my eyes burned holes into your skull, I felt a certain lull in the self-destructive thoughts which patter around my brain like the September rain. You, are no longer the man who helped me stand. I am my own light house in the storming sea you told me we could whether together but when the weather got too tough you jumped ship and I am now waist deep in my own psychological ****, still spiraling around in circles about all the things you said to me and all the places you’d promised you would be with me.
But in that moment before I turn to get onto the bus I forget about that. I feel your lips part to smile and then you wrap your arms around me and everything is going to be okay. The dragon is sleeping inside me and you are keeping it cradled in your arms I can tell the difference between what helps me and what causes me harm when you tell me I’m beautiful I believe you. And you bring me so much joy I could cry, but I don’t. I don’t even try.
You board the bus the moment melts and I’m back to being incarcerated by my own thoughts. Which are daggers lurking around the dungeons of my subconscious I am digging my nails into my skin I am trying to claw you out of my mind my hair is scattered across the pavement my movement is staggered and my breathing is haggard.
I am barely alive. I am trying to tie you to a tree in my back yard I am trying to teach my tongue to say someone else name next to I love you. I am trying to touch myself in a different way than you did.
I am tying you to the tree with the twine I cut from your brilliant red hair I no longer care what you think of me. I am no longer care if you think of me, I no longer care if anyone thinks of me ever again.
I want to be rinsed in acid and washed in your blood. I want your babies to be named after me I want to stop screaming your name into the night. I want to hold someone else tighter than you ever held me. I want to be angry without being told to keep quiet. I want to be able to trust myself with my own misfortune. I want to be able to tell the difference between good people and bad ones because you tasted like rain water and I was being burnt alive when I met you I miss you, like a dessert misses rain
That is to say that I have adapted to being without you. I have buried everything we built together, like the house we shared and the bed we made love in every night until my body was a well you’d wrung dry I want to be able to say goodbye to you.
I want to be rid of the sin which bound us forever.
I am tying you to the tree in my back yard and I am burying everything we built together.

Simon Timothy, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways!
You look like the sun, like daises smiling up at the moon. You make me swoon with your bad punch lines and imperfect rhymes.
You look like bees swarmed around honey pots soaking in the greatness of what they’ve created and you sound like serenades and smokers cough. And I want to be coddled by you. You smell like musky post rain September. You are so special and so patient, like you have been waiting for me to love you since we met and I bet when you look up faithful in the dictionary Simon Timothy will be smiling back at you. I want your name entwined into every line so all of our friends know I need you like a barricade needs people to hide behind it.
Like a breath needs a word to follow, like a bird needs a tree hollow, swallows need the breeze like birds need the bees like Simon Timothy how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
You bring out the best in me (more like the breast in me?) you bring out my worst jokes and my best one liners, you dress like an old timer and it makes my heart go wheezy like it’s a diamond miner. And your vest is fresh air. I’ve been drowning.
You, who showed me survivor and wrestling, you with your adorable obsessing. You, with your brilliant mind and the most charming laugh you, my rude dude with attitude.
Sarah Kay says: “you are the worst thing, that has ever happened to my poetry.” And it must be a twisted form of prophecy because I’m full of lovey dovey feelings I’m still reeling from the last time you told me you loved me, because I am broken at best. My body has cracks and crevices like an old rusty car and you still want to see how far I can drive. I want to thrive with you, I want to express every emotion I have ever felt, you make me feel secure like a seat belt but I am the buick beyond repair.
No matter how much mold is in there you still hold me while I’m crying and trying to tell you you deserve so much better but you don’t listen.
You, with the brilliant blonde hair I love running my fingers through, the one who kisses me like he already misses me even though I’m not going anywhere, you. Who lets me love whoever I need to because you know I need to and that I will always come back to you, you.
You, Simon Timothy. How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways!

To the author of the Huffington post “article” We Are The Generation Who Doesn’t Want a Relationship you’re wrong.
We Are The Generation Who Doesn’t Want to Be Straight, but you won’t let us.
I want domesticity like a fish wants a bicycle, which is to say that it would be nice but not useful.
I want the next boy I date to be able to flirt with the bar tender and to be tender and kinder than the last one. You keep putting us in jars with labels and naming us after stars and hurricanes but when we want to tear down your system you just say “shush now, just listen.”
I don’t want to hear your voice anymore – I don’t want to be told that I can’t love who I always have.
I don’t want any more halves, I want whole people to love me and make me more than the person who got called ***** all through high school because they couldn’t keep just one partner I don’t want to be an outsider anymore.
My darling says she wants someone to hold her hands when the world ends. You’ve put the fear of God in her and it makes her cry so much louder. My dearest says he wants to bring smiles to the people on the street and when he sees someone he thinks is cute his whole body goes mute I want to help him speak.
We keep swiping right like gamblers hoping for a chance at more than a second glance, we don’t want divorces or anymore court cases we don’t want second or third bases we just want patience while we pick up the pieces you dropped in front of us.
We want to keep believing in what you lost. We want pumpkin spice lattes and lately I want ladies, but not always because his smile drives me crazy and we don’t want babies.
We don’t want “consent is ****” we want control over our own bodies. We don’t want binaries we want multicolored beanies and maybe, just maybe, we want nothing but to be gay.

I have been listening to terrible poems all day because you don’t deserve a good one.
You don’t deserve the spit that hailed the ground from my mouth when I screamed about pride and privilege you do not deserve the ground that I stamped on, hollow breaths escaping a tiny mouth.
You thought you were helping me to get louder but I have lost so many voices since I heard you scream.
You do not deserve to look at me! I am going to be so much better because I left you, you do not deserve to think about the way we used to be, you do not deserve to miss me because if you did I would not be writing this about you.
Instead of miles would be mere meters between us. Our ginger hair would still be tangled in the morning light, your body breathing beneath mine.
If you deserved to love me, you wouldn’t have loved her. You wouldn’t have let her slip her fingers around the cracks in the foundation of our house and hold you.
If you deserved to miss me you wouldn’t have kissed her, you would have told me about her the moment you got home, still dripping with sweat still casting off bets still letting me call you my best friend and lover, you shouldn’t have loved her. You shouldn’t have loved her.
But you did. Dear ginger, did you taste her? Did her sweat linger on your naked body like the shame that should have lead you to tell me. Did the courage it took to take her body wash down with the rain while you walked home. Did you feel any pain? Dear ginger, when you knew we were over – when we felt it like the fog which covered the rental car as we inched closer to home, why did you let me feel so alone? At what point did you not recognize me as the person you swore to protect? Dear ginger, when did I become a stranger, when did I become someone you wanted to hurt? At what point did you start taking dating advice from my abuser?
Dear ginger why didn’t you just leave me? Dear ginger the ***** were always in your court. Except when they were in her mouth. Dear ginger, did you stop her from ******* you off or was that a lie too. I don’t actually know anything about you? I’m sorry am I being unfair? Dear ginger did she run her fingers through your hair? At any point during the two encounters did you maybe think that, while you were inside her. “Huh. Maybe I shouldn’t ******* cheat on my partner!?”
I must be over this, because I’m laughing about it. I must be over this because I’m bringing up good jokes, or maybe that’s just how I cope with a situation as ridiculous as this one. In truth, I’m just done.
I wrote a poem about you called plan bee, about a bumblebee who was too fat to fly. It was wordy, I was nervous because I had never written a poem about someone I loved before. After I read it to you we cried together and made love on the ***** kitchen floor. You made me feel like a small puppy, I was always excited to see you. Even lately I’ve been catching my breath when I met you on the street and when our eyes meet I want to believe that you’re the person I could trust and I’m your little bumble bee. But you don’t deserve to see me, and you don’t deserve to make me happy.

Less is more.
Blood and gore.
Mount Rushmore.
Rush away from me.
Like ****** water, (what are you doing to me?)
Traveling sales men sell me his body and his bruises.
On the weekdays, when the son says he wants the world to go away.
We lock ourselves on hide away shelves and built – in beds. (washer and dryer sets)
We play house,
Less is more.