i want my poems to have teeth.  
i want my words to cut,
to maim, to bleed.
with verses, i will raze
empires. with stanzas,
i will turn thrones to dust.
with nothing but a bit
of silver on my tongue,
i will take the life of god.

i’ll ply that same *****
like honey, taste the sweet
nothings dripping
between knocking knees.
quake and quiver for me,
let me slip, furtive
as nightshade
to sate your curiosity.

feel the weight of veracity
in these fingers patiently
transcribing forgotten melodies,
compressing ivory keys
to sing of all that was lost
and what was gained
from the process.

The truth is I have no idea how to begin this
because I don’t even remember
how or when exactly you began to invade my consciousness.
you were an uninvited guest, a gatecrasher, an intruder
filling my mind with paranoia and endless dilemma —
how I contemplate about going out or not
because I get overwhelmed with crowded places
like public transports, and malls, and fast food chains,
how I s-stutter whenever placing an order,
or how I could not finish one sentence without repeating
repeating a word or or two.

It might sound funny how I find a sea of people terrifying,
how I feel a dagger or a gun pointed at me every time I step
outside my comfort zone,
how I would replay failed scenarios inside my head like a broken tape,
how I would apologize for actions that demanded no apology.
I often get nightmares about being asleep and not being able to wake up
and sometimes I dream about waking up in a strange bed in a foreign room
filled with people with the strangest faces talking in tones barely audible
but when the voices would all stir together
I would run out of air and pass out,
but I still wake up though, screaming, trembling
signaling another episode of survival.

If I could drive, I would take you away with me and bring you to a sunset beach
tell you that everything’s gonna be alright
that it’s okay to knock me down sometimes
but not too hard to break me
just enough to remind me that I am, after all, human
Or maybe I would drown you or maybe not
because I get too overwhelmed with the waves
I struggle against the current,
and I am the one who gets drowned instead.

I hate you, no, I mean I love you. I should love you
because they said those we love are meant to leave
So I will love you, I will love you until you get tired of me,
until you no longer find me appealing
I will love you obsessively, until you get sick of me,
until you run out of places to run to, until you run out of air
I will love you until I run out of words and metaphors
and rhyme or reason,
I will love you with the hopes that one day I could finally say:
“My anxieties have died beautifully, with dignity,
in their sleep.”

his scent
lingering
on
my skin
my clothes
my bed
my hair
my memories of him

his scent
like cologne and morning kisses
like sunlight peeping in through the shutters
like innocent smiles and laughter laced with love

his scent
reminds me of everything good
and pure in the world

i want his scent all over me
but now
i get it
in fading wafts of air

his scent
to be gone forever
my love
your scent

I wanna have lunch with Poe,
at Burger King,

because I'm sure he would appreciate how ghoulish that King in their commercial is

I don't want him to recite verse
while we fill our medium cups with corn syrup nectar--a giant leap
down from laudanum

I do want to ask about the Cask of Amontillado and being walled in slowly, for eternity

for to me that is creepier than all the crimson cream in the Masque of the Red Death

I want to know if he likes the fries--will he dare to dip them in scarlet paste we call catsup

mostly I want to know if he remembers the alley where he was found,

not yet a legend, consumed by consumption and delirium in equal measure

and if there were rodents privileged to hear his last whispered words--or even a gasp

I am buying, Ed, so grab that Whopper with both bony paws and tell me terrible tales, evermore

I'm too drunk today, so don't tell me it's over.
Maybe you can tell me tomorrow when I'm sober.
Or, don't tell me at all, because its too painful to hear.
Everything I tried to do to convince you its real,
Just fell to the wayside so you can be you.
Maybe no amount of words I say could change that too,
But, there's a part of me that wishes things could be different,
That a relationship could exist even with the distance.
I know what I want, and I know what I found
And my feelings won't change even when you're not around.
So you go do you, because I know that's what you need.
I'll stay here and wait patiently.
Because, no matter how long it takes, I'm willing to wait
To take another shot at something this great.
But if it never happens, that'd be ok too;
In the end, I got to know you.
And even though it's not enough, it'll have to be;
You're one of the greatest things to ever happen to me.

<•>

Good Acts are like Good Poems

"Good acts are like good poems.
One may easily get their drift,
but they are not rationally understood"
Albert  Einstein

Ach, mein guter Kumpel!
Ach, mein bester Freund!

how could I not have known,
the syncopation, the synchronization,
between what I write, and the impetuous impetus within,
that caustic sense that burns words
from my chest
directly onto the paper
are more than correlated,
even causation-ally related
after all, you, naturally, the master of relativity

but you know me Al,^
I, the quibbler from  NYC*
have to have a slightly different take,
in my gemeinschaft city of eight million strangers,
we always must have eight million and one
opinions

true dat, when I am on the fifth or sixth stanza,
realizing got no clue what the poem is rambling about,
but it sounds so good, lovely, pretty words,
why ***** it up with scientific rationality?

but good acts are easy, uber understood,
rationally we live to survive and
do what we to
make the species survive, common sense triumphs,
disguised as sacrifice, forgetting to roll the dice,
doing what comes like a good poem,
and what needs doing or writing
is so intuitively obvious,
just love poetry,
a global necessity

so check out Houston in two thousand and seventeen

here's hoping life in heaven ain't boring  
know that you've seen, peeked, peaked,
at the theory of everything,

resolving the contradictions
between general laws of physics
and those pesky tiny quantum mechanicals,
even solving that 'other' equation

GA = GP